What To Do With All the Dirt?

Maryland Dam Trapping Harmful Sediment Poised To Harm Chesapeake Bay

According to a U.S. Geological Survey estimate, more than 160 million tons of sediment floats behind the Conowingo, built near Darlington, Md., in 1928. About 3 million tons arrive there each year, and about a million tons of that sloshes over the gates, said Mike Langland, a USGS hydrologist.

Environmentalists say the sediment dump during the storm was so high that it could spawn another mammoth, oxygen-depleted "dead zone" like this past summer's.
If the storage capacity is reached in about 20 years, as Langland predicted, at least 3 million tons of sediment would wash into the bay yearly, making matters far worse.

As I believe I have mentioned before, when I first arrived in Maryland in the late 80s, scientists and the EPA were talking about what to do when Conowingo Reservoir  filled up (which IIRC, they were saying was another 20-30 years out), and it was no longer a sink for the large amount of sediments washing down from Pennsylvania (and a bit of New York and Maryland).  I believe we are closer to a fix for Social Security than we are to a fix for that.  I have lots of ideas, but none of them are cheap or easy...

Anyway, I didn't find this article especially new, although from the number of articles out on it recently, somebody must be pushing the idea.  However, found this cool video of a the White Salmon River dam in Washington (the state) at The Other McCain's, and I really wanted to use it.

The actual breaking of the dam is spectacular, but the time lapse afterward, showing the sediments shifting around as the water level in the reservoir, is pretty indicative of the problem.  The White Salmon is a tiny river compared to the Susquehanna, so imagine this on a gigantic scale.



Incidentally, I don't agree with Smitty that this is necessarily a bad thing:

It doesn’t sound like these guys are doing an improvement project. Rather, its the Noble Savage Myth playing out. While I don’t believe that these Progressives should be repressed in any way, we must, I repeat, must, expose them for the nutjobs they are and ensure that they don’t completely wreck Western Civilization in their pursuit of folly.

Some dams have simply outlived their usefulness, and can be removed to help restore ecosystem function. Unfortunately, Conowingo does not appear to be one of them.