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Posted

I'll be first but I need my bank note paid off to make it work, please send donations. Not sure I could get Amy to buy into the idea and would probably get old after a year or so. Another thing I can daydream about and make sound much more romantic than it would really be. Could I at least put in solar and wind power, and maybe a dam here on the NFoW.

there is already a dam on NFoW.

everything in this post is purely opinion and is said to annoy you.

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Posted

I really think the economy of the white river would be the same if there were no dams. Towns would fight for which stretch has the best smallmouth fishing. Think of the possibilities!!

everything in this post is purely opinion and is said to annoy you.

Posted

I really think the economy of the white river would be the same if there were no dams. Towns would fight for which stretch has the best smallmouth fishing. Think of the possibilities!!

Cotter, Smallmouth Capitol of the World.

There's a fine line between fishing and sitting there looking stupid.

Posted

Interesting about the economic boon to Branson that the dams brought...

There's no doubt that development of the Branson area would have taken a very different path without the lakes. Chances are that Branson would have developed more like a West Plains or a Harrison, rather than becoming the Ozark capital of tourism. Would that have been a bad thing? The largely unrestrained and uncontrolled explosion of Branson into a giant tourist trap with a lot of pretty decent attractions and also a lot of growth problems wouldn't have happened.

Nor was all of it automatic even with the lakes. You can find a lot of other places with big lakes surrounding them that never went the Branson route...and darned few that did. There are no Bransons in the area around Stockton-Truman-Pomme de Terre, and even around Lake of the Ozarks the development took a somewhat different path.

The proponents of big dams always touted that economic boom that would come with the dam, but in many cases it was short-lived, and in some places it didn't happen at all. And in a very real sense, when it DID happen it wasn't a good thing for the environment. Many areas would have been better off with free-flowing rivers and a much lower population.

Posted

Guess I'll weigh in on the energy thing...so-called clean coal will probably NEVER be a reality. Under current technology to can't make coal all that clean and still have it be an economical power source. And even worse, getting it out of the ground is about as destructive as you can get, with strip mining and mountaintop removal mining and acid run-off. Coal is cheap on the front end, but will probably always be VERY expensive when the environmental and health costs are factored in. Too bad that the average consumer of coal-fired electricity doesn't have to pay that hidden cost...the victims are those that live close to the mines and those who suffer from the mining and use.

Wind...yep, there are quite a lot of migrating birds that die from the big windmills. It is an added source of bird mortality that perhaps might push some species a little further toward the edge. There is also the fact that siting of wind farms is often a problem.

Solar...perhaps the perfect solution if we can ever make it inexpensive and as reliable as the electric grid is today. But it ain't there yet.

Nuclear...until you solve the waste problem and the possible security problems, it'll always be a NIMBY situation. Not many people would be totally welcoming of a nuke plant in their neighborhood, or a waste repository, or even the transport of waste through their town.

I think that perhaps we need to stop looking for the next big source of electricity that we can just plug into the power grid and then dump all the old technology. We need to start considering a smaller scale grid. Have each city, or each town, or each industrial plant, or even each home, be responsible for their own electricity, with the existing large scale power grids tied in to furnish back-up power only. What would work best for St. Louis might not be the best solution for Columbia or Rolla or Eminence, or for Monsanto or the former Anheuser-Busch or Joe's Supermarket or my house. De-centralize our power generation and you lose the necessity for huge power plants, whether they be 500 acre wind farms, 500 ft. high dams, or a new $5 billion nuke plant.

Posted

GotMuddy -

If the very best thing you can come up with for your signature is a type-byte from another member's post....

well... you lack...

Especially one from Erk. He's definitely not doing cartwheels for a veggie burrito.

 

 

Posted

GotMuddy -

If the very best thing you can come up with for your signature is a type-byte from another member's post....

well... you lack...

I like it because it is likely the most informative post he has made to date. :blur:

everything in this post is purely opinion and is said to annoy you.

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