Re: Tariffs and bikes

On 4/12/2025 10:59 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 4/12/2025 11:17 AM, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/12/2025 10:09 AM, John B. wrote:

On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 09:02:45 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>

Our total national hydroelectric power
generation is lower than 60, 70 years ago. How does that
make any sense?

>
>
Wasn't a dam broken down somewhere? Something about letting the fishes
swim, or some such thing.
>

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Ongoing disaster.  We're ripping them out, not building more and better dams. See first chart here:
>
https://energycentral.com/c/ec/hydroelectric-generators- are-among- united-states-oldest-power-plants

 Dam removal doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hydroelectric power. Locally, the Mahoning River was a famously polluted industrial sewer. For about 100 years, miles and miles of steel mills and other factories lining the river used the water for process cooling, and discharged untreated waste directly into the river. Many of those factories had low head dams to ensure access to the water they used.
 The mills are nearly all gone, but until very recently all the dams remained. They are being removed to allow the river to recover by flushing and dispersing heavily polluted sediment. Fish, birds and even kayakers and canoeists have returned to the river - although it's common to hear advice to not walk in the stream. In at least some places, if your feet sink too deeply in the sediment, they say you'll be standing in thick grease.
 

Thanks for noting the range and complexity of policy.  No one likes crap in the rivers, of course.
That said, the Chicago River still flows backwards*.
After promotion by T Roosevelt, Congress made Yosemite a national park but not the adjacent Hetch Hetchy which San Francisco dammed to run water into the city:
https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy
All those questions are fluid, particular and local without any overriding national sentiment or policy. Various parochial and localized interests affect actual policy. I am by nature a curmudgeon of sorts and I do not make the rules.
*For fans of incongruent policy, Chicago absolutely could not survive without that.  Simultaneously, due to the narrow lakeside watersheds, suburbs of Chicago and Milwaukee are engaged in fierce battles to acquire lake water for their municipal systems but mostly cannot as it 'removes water from the Lake Michigan watershed'.  This is also known as the golden rule; the man with the gold makes the rules.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971