https://radio.wcmu.org/local-regional-news/2024-08-26/dam-removal
"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, building dams for electricity
generation was the big new thing. Those hydroelectric dams provided power to
nearby cities. But big companies found centralized coal-burning power plants
could provide power to larger areas and make more money. Many of the generators
at the dams were shut down decades ago.
Michigan has been removing more of those obsolete dams in recent years. Dam
removal is no easy task.
Near Plainwell in Allegan County, big pieces of construction equipment are
working on what will end up being a nearly 20-year dam removal project on the
Kalamazoo River.
“So there was a dam here. The water would have been about 12 feet higher in the
location (where) we’re standing,” Mark Mills said at the site where the
Plainwell Number 1 dam once stood. Mills is a regional supervisor for the
Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He’s spent a good deal of his career
working on this project.
“There were paper mills upstream that were dumping their waste essentially in
the river as waste disposal. That waste had a lot of different chemicals in it,
including PCBs,” Mills said, explaining part of the reason why the job has
taken so long.
The PCBs — which the EPA describes as "probable human carcinogens," or
substances likely to cause cancer — came from a new kind of carbon-less copy
paper. You could write on the top sheet and the second and even third sheet
would copy it. The method involved tiny droplets of oil in the paper that
carried ink. When a pen would put pressure on the top sheet those droplets
broke and bled onto the paper fibers on the layer below. That oil contained
PCBs. When the paper was taken back to the mills to be recycled, the pulp was
kept, but the oil substance was dumped into the river. That was standard
practice until the Clean Water Act was passed.
In the 1960s, the state and some municipalities took possession of several dams
on the Kalamazoo River, when companies no longer wanted them.
Over time, some of them began to deteriorate and become liabilities. If they
failed, it could mean a flood, as happened in Midland a couple of years ago. A
flood could carry toxic PCB-contaminated sediment downstream into homes and
businesses.
The State of Michigan first requested to remove the dams it owns in 1984.
“The Environmental Protection Agency said, nope, you can't remove those dams
until the contamination is removed from the impoundments,” Mills said."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/ritual-technology/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
