Serious infrastructure and national security concerns with Klamath Dam destruction Ric Costales 013024

Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Upholding rural Americans' rights to grow food,
own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources.

"There are now extremely serious infrastructure and national security lenses through which we should re-examine this (Klamath Dam destruction) project"
by Ric Costales, retired logger and Siskiyou County Natural Resource Policy Specialist 1/30/24

Ric and Judy Costales clearing dead trees from their property	Ric Costales	Copco Lake before Copco Dam destruction last week	Copco Lake after KRRC destroyed the dam and drained the lake: 8 deer drowned in the sludge
		Photo by Chrissie Ishida Reynolds	Photo from Chrissie Ishida Reynolds Facebook post

						
						
						"Neighbors: I worked to save the dams both before and 
						during my time working for the Siskiyou County Board of 
						Supervisors as their Natural Resource Policy Specialist. 
						We lost that battle and now one of the dams is gone. 
						However, events on the national and international scene 
						are putting the decommissioning in a critical context 
						that never entered the debate before the decision was 
						final.

						
						
						There are now extremely serious infrastructure and 
						national security lenses through which we should 
						re-examine this project. Earlier, the 163 megawatt, 
						70,000-home generating capacity was considered a grain 
						of sand on the beach of the national power grid. Their 
						capacity was also, in the broad-based enthrallment with 
						renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, thought 
						to be easily replaced.

						
						
						Not only has time proven that solar and wind 
						replacements are elusive phantoms for various economic 
						and technical reasons, solar conversion in this country 
						is virtually entirely dependent on China for solar 
						panels. Bipartisan federal legislation passed to stop 
						China’s use of forced labor has brought the importation 
						of Chinese panels to a crawl and brought utility-scale 
						solar projects to a standstill. We are years if not 
						decades behind federal conversion goals.

						
						
						And our relations with China and other malefactor states 
						on the international scene are deteriorating rapidly 
						into the realm of serious armed conflict.

						
						
						I did some research running numbers and investigating 
						replacing the dams with solar. The 10th largest solar 
						farm in America in 2021 is the Mount Signal Solar 
						Project in Calexico, California. It has a capacity of 
						594 megawatts, occupies 3 square miles, and 3 million 
						solar panels on state of the art tracking systems. It is 
						advertised as providing the electricity for 72,000 
						homes, 2000 more than the four Klamath dams. Replacing 
						the dams with solar will require one of the largest 
						solar farms in America.

						
						
						Despite whatever may be the ecological impact of the 
						mining, manufacture, shipping, installation and land 
						dedication for 3 million solar panels, where are we 
						going to get them? And when? We are hopelessly behind in 
						Biden’s renewable energy scheme.

						
						
						However small the overall size of the Klamath Project, 
						it will have to be replaced. Is this the time to destroy 
						it given the current environment. Perhaps, when 
						technological and infrastructure solutions such as 
						modular nuclear reactors become workable and national 
						and international tensions improve and cool down, but 
						not now. Decommissioning should be put on hold. It’s 
						irresponsible to persist with this project however far 
						along it is, and however willing its proponents are to 
						damn the torpedoes and rush full speed ahead."

====================================================

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml