The Elwha Dam removal project and the dematerialization of nature
Item
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Title
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The Elwha Dam removal project and the dematerialization of nature
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:8852cf7af52a:11799
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identifier
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12458
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Creator
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Lanz Oca, Enrique,
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Contributor
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Cindi Katz
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Environmental studies | Environmental management | Alternative Energy | Dam removals | Dematerialization of nature | Electric bioregionalisms | Energy landscapes
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Abstract
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Throughout the twentieth century dams have been used to bolster America's power, prestige and sense of itself as a nation capable of producing energy for all of its citizens. In the golden age of dam building, from the 1930s to the 1960s, dams' praises were sung by folksingers, Hollywood actors, and government propagandists alike. Big dams such as the Hoover or the Grand Coulee emerged as iconic features of the national landscape, symbolizing the governments' power to do everything from defeat the allies, jumpstart the economy, or control nature by converting wild rivers to natural energy reserves. However, recent data indicate the arrival of an era of dam removals, as dams across the nation have begun to be dismantled at an unprecedented rate beginning in the late 1980s. It is vital to document this trend because it indicates a change in the way in which energy is being produced, consumed, and understood in this country, which is reshaping our conceptions of nature. By studying the largest dam removal project in the world and the second largest ecological restoration in the country, the Elwha Plan in Washington State, this dissertation reveals how energy is being reconceived at the local level precisely at the moment when the U.S. is reinvigorating its search for energy resources. This study examines the ways in which the government, corporations, community members, conservationists, and tribe members in Port Angeles all contribute to producing nature anew. It traces how in the wake of the dam removals, private and public interests are combining in novel ways and invoking the ideologies of restoration, bioregionalism, and renewable energy in order to further penetrate nature. Such new configurations of capital are redeveloping the electricity grid in Cascadia in ways that exploit regional identity in order to remap the region and change the way that energy is flowing throughout the nation. As dams are demolished across the nation and private renewable projects replace them, hitherto public domains, such as the electricity grid, are privatized. Once heralded as national icons, dams are disappearing from the landscape and nature is losing powerful materials.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Earth & Environmental Sciences
