About a year ago, Eschaton, Punchy, and I visited this dam. We had nothing but a name to go on – and thanks for the tip, Avius. Anyway, the three of us met at a grocery store about a half hour away, and as we drove to the dam I was ridiculously excited – I’ve loved dams for years, long before I knew UE was a thing. I love them because they’re at the crux of human needs and ecological integrity. They’re part of our industrial infrastructure, as well as symbols of our tenuous upper hand on nature. And apart from all that, I just think they’re pretty.
We drove up the gravel road to a closed gate, which, based on what we could tell from Google maps, was as far from the dam as we’d feared it would be. But what else were we supposed to do? We pulled the car to the side of the road and started hoofing it. A few minutes after slipping past the gate – which was closed, locked, and said “no trespassing” – we saw the road swell with dust, and moments later a white jeep approached us. Punchy waved hello, and we kept walking. The jeep kept driving. The legal route can extend so far!
So, we kept trucking and eventually reached the dam.
It was built in the 1920s.
The generators were removed more than 50 years ago, so it’s essentially a water main now. The reservoir supplies water to about 300,000 people.
If everything seems small, well yes, the dam is quite small. However, the scale is hard to fathom and I wish I had gotten a few shots with people in them.
It might look like a coiled turd, but it’s actually a river’s first step on the journey to someone’s faucet.
Reflecting on this explore from a distance of about 1 year and 3,000 miles makes me think about the gap between what it looks like and what it is. Yes, the pipes look small. But they’re huge. And a single dam looks inconsequential, but it changes the ecological landscape dramatically. And you’d think cities would secure their water mains, but nah. Skinny people can slip right in. So it goes.