Thursday, October 30, 2008

Turning a corner on dam removal

I never thought I'd see the day that a rural Oregon county called for removal of a dam. Jackson County in resource-using southern Oregon wants a dam removed from the Rogue River, nice.

Why am I surprised? Jackson County is famous for, among other things, the longest public library closure in the United States,
thanks to residents voting not to fund the libraries cuz who needs those damn books anyway?

For years, rural Oregonians have fought against dam removal on the Rogue River, on the Umpqua River, and almost everywhere else (I know, I was part of these struggles).

We've really turned a corner away from the days when removing a damn was considered un-American.

And to make the whole thing seem like an epidemic, the McKenzie River is also being freed of some salmon-killing dams.

Maybe we weren't wasting our time when we tried to start this trend!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally unrelated to your post...
I saw an article earlier today that suggested that Bush was looking to relax some rule that was an impediment to commercial fishing in the ocean. Any idea what that is?

Derik said...

It's great that Oregon is fighting to preserve nature and restore the natural balance of things.