dams

In FERN’s latest story, published with Truthdig, reporter Christopher Ketcham unpacks the extensive human and environmental costs of hydroelectricity, even as government regulators, environmental journalists, climate academics, and green-grid design wizards celebrate it as a key piece of our sustainable energy strategy.

The fate of a fish as old as the dinosaurs is being decided in Montana, says The New York Times. The Missouri River used to team with pallid sturgeon, but today only 125 of the fish, which can grow up to 6-feet and live as long as the average human, remain. Most environmentalists blame dams built to irrigate farmland for the species’ demise, since they block sturgeon eggs from moving downstream. “The eggs end up trapped in reservoirs like Lake Sakakawea, with a lot of sediment, a lot of bacteria and very little oxygen. There they suffocate and die,” says the Times.

The governors of California and Oregon are scheduled to join Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in signing an agreement today to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River by 2020, said the North Coast Journal, based in Eureka, CA.

Caught in a multi-year drought, California voters approved $7.1 billion in bonds last year to improve the state's water infrastructure, and now faces the choice of where and how to spend the money, says the New York Times.