Long Creek, Oregon bends toward the warm sunlight and listens to a faraway baseball game on a scratchy radio.
Just as every baseball player is a magician, every dam is a murderer.
Every dam kills a river. Every one of them creates a reservoir that’s doomed. The water will evaporate, and the water takes on more silt.
There’s no way around it.
And so the plumbers of the west release studious projections and unsettling reports on what they call the rate of sedimentation measured by acre feet per year. Engineers use this data to build dams strong enough to hold back countless tons of sludge.
When construction of the dam has been completed, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation engineers are flanked by politicians who show up for the photo op.
The water behind them glistens. Wherever the dam has been built, the sun shines just as it does in Long Creek, Oregon or Peach Springs, Arizona.
Speeches at the dam’s dedication extoll man’s determination and ingenuity. All the deferred promises of an unforgiving land are about to be fulfilled.
No mention is made of nature, her uncertainties and her disinclination to follow man’s wishes.
Time passes.
The Bureau of Reclamation engineers and the politicians are long gone when the water has dried up.
All that’s left behind is saline streaked mud.
