White River Before The Dams

[Wayne SW/MO]

I believe that the people who do travel from far away seeking an outdoor experience are probably not the "drunk rednecks" that we speak of. If you drive all the way from Kansas city for an outdoor experience, you probably aren't the destructive type. No trace left behind type folks. I would think anyway. On the other hand, Im looking toward the people who live close enough to casually drive over to the white and dung all over the place. People who dont care, they have access, booze, guns, fourwheelers, and an ecologically dangerous attitude.

When youre floating down a river and you see something shiny on the bottom, you know instantly its a beer can. You also know instantly it was a dumbass that sank it. Its usually a bud light can.

That describes the Niangua for sure, now do you want to guess where most of its visitors come from? If you said KC area first and SL second you would be right. Do some locals abuse the rivers, yes, don't people everywhere? Next time you come down take some of the trash from your fellow townsmen back with you.

[creekin bassnerd]

I will agree that if the white was not dammed it would be a popular destination...FOR FISHING. Bass fishing the white is a good thing and city folk like from Owen's outfitters could make the journey, and FISH. Set fishing regulations and enforce them. You would still have gas-powered boats up and down the river, but they aint gonna be skiing. Chances are they are there to fish. If you want to float a river that is strictly canoes, you have plenty of options with all the streams we have. If you want to float the mighty white, then do it.

Most people do want to drink when they go to the river, aint nothin wrong with that. But when you leave your trash behind, you are trying to kill what we love.

I understand where you are coming from about where would these people go if the reservoirs didnt exist. I think without the reservoirs, we could be talking about a smaller pool of people, and also I think without reservoirs, that our culture would be a little more oriented toward nature preservation and not so much, "I can do whatever I want to the land as long as it is profitable for me."-as the precedent has been set

Anyways, like TJ said, I get a unique emotion when Im floating down an Ozark stream. If the main populous were people who shared that unique feeling, we would probably be able to ensure that our rivers/and streams stay clean and on their own evolutionary paths.

[creekin bassnerd]

Well said Ozark trout fisher!! Good luck this weekend!

[Justin Spencer]

If the main populous were people who shared that unique feeling, we would probably be able to ensure that our rivers/and streams stay clean and on their own evolutionary paths.

Amen to that, unfortunately the main populous allowed the dams to go in in the first place. When you work intimately with the general public like I do you find that while most people are good people they don't look at the natural world like most of us do. We avoid the weekend summer crowds and float and fish in the off season as much as possible, we take our trash with us and pick up other people's trash if we can. I wish everyone would have had the opportunity to grow up hunting, fishing and floating like many of us were able to. We had a respect for nature instilled in us that most people don't have. It is not because they are bad people it is because most people are from cities and a trip to the river or lake is a vacation where they let loose, drink beer and have a good time. Unfortunately when you get alcohol involved people don't take care of things like they would if they were back home. Cans find there way into the river, feces finds it's way into the middle of the floor in my bathhouse, showers get left running, etc. I wish everyone thought like the bassnerd I know I do, but I also understand reality and am constantly amazed by the actions of the general populous.

[creekin bassnerd]

Im with ya Justin! The more we debate, the more I like you.

[Wayne SW/MO]

You're all trying to apply '10 standards to the 40's and it simply doesn't fit. The debate over what the White would be like is fine, but the argument that they should have never built the dams is ridicules. With soldiers returning from the war and the population needing jobs and secure food sources, damming a remote river that produced little but recreation for the upper class wasn't a problem. Protecting the crops produced on the lower White was more important than fishing on the upper.

No one cares more about the flows than I, but your passion woulds be better served if aimed at polluters and the littering that sometimes degrades what we still have. The Buffalo isn't that far from what the White was and fortunately its protected. The Niangua would be a jewel if access was controlled to allow it to reach its potential, but the demand for the big city dollars has made it virtually impossible to enjoy as a fishing river. The attack on the Niangua continues now that Bennett has been purified.

[Al Agnew]

Of course, it's a moot point, since the dams aren't going away during our lifetimes. But if I could go back in time and be the king of North America, I wouldn't stop all big dams, I'd re-site them. There are a lot of much lower quality streams around the perimeter of the Ozarks, in north Missouri, etc. that could have been dammed and could have furnished all the recreation, power generation, and some of the flood control that the Ozark dams have, without sacrificing any of our best quality streams. The two main reasons that they were never dammed are that the dams would have been somewhat more expensive at the time due to wider valleys that required more earth fill, and higher quality farmland to be flooded that would have cost more money to buy up.

We could have dammed a number of streams north of the Osage. For flood control purposes, we could have left the major Ozark streams alone and built a lot of smallish dams on minor tributaries, scattered throughout the Ozarks. If we really needed a few big dams in the Ozarks, we could have dammed the Gasconade at the lower end, and maybe dammed the White near where it leaves the Ozarks. Or if we wanted just one real jewel of a big lake in the middle of the Ozarks, how about a dam on the White just above the mouth of the Buffalo, which would back water up to about halfway up the present Bull Shoals and back water up Crooked Creek only to about the area where it starts to go mostly dry below Yellville, thus providing tailwater trout fishing on the White while preserving all the best floatable sections of the White and James and Kings.

Nice to dream, anyway.

[gotmuddy]

Every time I float the NFoW I ask everyone I meet where they are from. Almost all of them are from springfield if they aren't locals.

[Danoinark]

The Trout Underground blog had this....

http://troutunderground.com/2010/11/14/documentary-examines-snake-river-dams/

[Al Agnew]

What the trailer doesn't say is that those Snake River dams were built for two things...irrigation water and to make the Snake navigable to Lewiston, Idaho. How much do we depend upon the Snake being navigable to Lewiston? Not much, since it is little used at this point. How much do we depend upon the irrigation water? Not much, since most if not all the irrigation water could be gotten from the undammed river. There are four lower Snake River dams. If I remember correctly, they do have some generating capacity, but furnish less than 1% of the electricity in the Northwestern grid. They were complete boondoggles from start to finish, and just about totally wiped out salmon runs up the Snake.

Edited to add that I read up on this issue a while back, but I'm relying on memory here, which can be a faulty thing. If anybody has different info please correct me. I can look up the facts later but not right now.