1AC – Hydropower Dams

Plan
The United States federal government should decommission hydropower dams
that pollute water resources in the United States.
Advantage 1 – International Dams
 Scenario 1 – IndoPak
India is constructing dams despite Pakistani objections – bilateral talks have
failed, and diplomacy is failing
The Economic Times, 8-30-2018, "India rejects Pakistan's objections on two hydropower
projects," Economic Times, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-
nation/india-rejects-pakistans-objections-on-two-hydropower-
projects/articleshow/65612203.cms?from=mdr (TET is the foremost economic publication in
India)///JHS SMS

India has rejected Pakistan's objections on its two hydropower projects on the Chenab river, a
Pakistani official said today, as the crucial high-level bilateral talks on the Indus Waters Treaty concluded
here. After the conclusion of talks, the first official engagement between India and Pakistan since Imran Khan became Prime
Minister on August 18, Pakistan's Commissioner for Indus Waters Syed Meher Ali Shah told reporters that there would be no
briefing and statement on the issue. "It is a sensitive matter and we were conveyed (by the Foreign
Office) not to speak on it. The Foreign Office will issue a statement in this regard," Shah said. Another official of the Pakistani
side, on the condition of anonymity, said India rejected Pakistan's objections on the construction of the
1,000MW Pakal Dul dam and 48MW Lower Kalnal hydropower projects on the Chenab river.
"India has hinted at continuation of work on both the hydropower projects ," he said. "Pakistan
may approach the international forums defined in the Indus Waters Treaty over New Delhi's
refusal to accept the requests as narrated in the detailed objections," the official said. Pakistan has made it
clear that it will have no option but to appointment neutral experts and take the case to the
International Court of Arbitration in case India fails to address its concerns which are genuine, he said. "Pakistani
authorities asked Indians to reduce the height of the Pakal Dul's reservoir up to five metres. India has also been
urged to maintain 40-metre height above sea level while making spillways' gates of the Pakal Dul project besides
clarifying the pattern and mechanism for the water storage and releases," Dawn quoted one of the participants of the meeting as
saying. "Similarly, Pakistan raised some technical concerns over design of the the Lower Kalnal hydropower project,
requesting India to address them at the earliest," the report said. India was represented by a nine-member delegation of the Indian
Water Commission led by Commissioner P K Saxena. Yesterday, Shah said Pakistan raised objections on the 1000MW Pakal Dul and
the 48MW Lower Kalnai hydroelectric projects and a detailed discussion will be held during the talks. "We had also raised concerns
over construction of dams on Pakistani rivers and India did not bother about it and continued
doing the same," Shah said, adding India will reply to Pakistan's queries on the controversial water projects. Former Pakistan
Indus Water Commissioner Syed Jamaat Ali Shah told that the successive Pakistani governments had given
much importance to its water disputes with India. "India does not bother about Pakistan's
objections. It begins work on building hydro power projects on the Pakistani rivers and the
Pakistani government raises objections afterwards. Unless the Pakistani government seriously
takes up these matters with India it will not get relief, " he said, adding that Pakistan also needs to plead its case
in the World Bank. According to an official of the Pakistan Water Commission, Pakistan has been raising reservations over the
designs of the two projects — 1000MW Pakal Dul and 48MW Lower Kalnai hydroelectric projects on River Chenab — and would like
India to either modify the designs to make them compliant to the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty or put the projects on hold until New
Delhi satisfies Islamabad. "The two sides will in talks also finalise the schedule of future meetings of the Permanent Indus
Commission and visits of the teams of the Indus commissioners," he said. Pakistan has also challenged the discharge series of River
Lower Kalnai at Dunadi for winter months and estimated permissible pondage of 0.38 cubic megametres compared to Indian design
pondage of 2.74 cubic megametres. The Lower Kalnai project is on a left bank tributary of Chenab and can have gross storage of
about 1,508 acre feet of water. The Indian delegation will return to India tomorrow. The water commissioners of Pakistan and India
are required to meet twice a year and arrange technical visits to projects' sites and critical river head works, but Pakistan
had
been facing a lot of problems in timely meetings and visits. The last meeting of the Pakistan-India Permanent
Indus Commission was held in New Delhi in March during which both the sides had shared details of the water flow and the
quantum of water being used under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. India and Pakistan signed the treaty in 1960 after nine years of
negotiations, with the World Bank being a signatory. The treaty sets out a mechanism for cooperation and information exchange
between the two countries regarding their use of the rivers. However, there have been disagreements and
differences between India and Pakistan over the treaty.

Ratchets up geopolitical tensions and ecological risks absent coordination and

precautions – only the Aff creates the expertise necessary
Amrith, 18 --- professor of South Asian studies at Harvard University (Sunil S. Amrith, author of
Unruly Waters. "Opinion: The Race to Dam the Himalayas Hundreds of big projects are planned
for the rivers that plunge from the roof of the world.", New York Times, 12-1-2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/himalayas-mountains-dams.html, accessed: 6-
23-2021///OK

India is not alone in its ambitions. Hungry for energy and threatened by an acute shortage of fresh water, other Asian
nations are competing to harness the power of the Himalayan rivers, on which more than half a
billion people depend directly for sustenance. More than 400 dams are under construction, or
planned for the coming decades, in Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan; at least 100 more have been
proposed across the Chinese border in Tibet. If the plans come to fruition, this will be one of the world’s most heavily
dammed regions. But these projects will aggravate international tensions. They carry grave ecological

risks . To understand why their backers cast caution aside, it helps to look to history. When India became independent in 1947, large dams promised
to even out the vagaries of a monsoon climate that provides more than two-thirds of the country’s annual rainfall. These projects held out the prospect
of increasing food production in a part of the world where the memory of famine still stung and where the partition of India from Pakistan left both
countries feeling they had lost valuable agricultural land. For new Asian nations, these bold engineering projects symbolized their attainment of political
freedom and embrace of modernity. When he surveyed the Bhakra Nangal Dam in 1956, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, declared that
“these are the new temples of India, where I worship.” Dam building was a global obsession. In the 1950s, the World Bank began
financing multipurpose water projects in the developing world that combined irrigation, power generation and flood control; by the end of the 20th

century, the
bank had lent billions of dollars to dam projects. American engineers roved the world
selling their hydraulic expertise . So did their Soviet counterparts, who advised the enormous program of dam construction in Mao’s
China. In that era, India and China sought to learn from each other. In 1954, two of India’s leading engineers embarked on a two-month tour of China’s
water projects and found that the Chinese were working at a pace, and on a scale, that dwarfed India’s ambitions. India’s dam fever reached a peak in
the 1970s and ’80s. Roughly half of the more than 3,500 large dams built in India from 1947 to 2000 were constructed between 1970 and 1989. The
total number of large dams built in China after 1949 is estimated at more than 20,000. But the 1970s were also when the benefits of dams began to be
questioned. In a landmark 1982 report, the pioneering environmentalist Anil Agarwal and his colleagues at New Delhi’s Center for Science and
Environment highlighted the huge numbers of people displaced by water projects. It became a rallying cry for India’s environmental movement. And
despite the sums spent on large dams, they contributed ever less to India’s irrigation as millions of farmers turned, instead, to exploiting groundwater
through electrified pumps. This was a more readily accessible source of irrigation water at the command of individual farmers — at least those who
could afford the pumps. Estimates for the number of people displaced by dams in India since 1947 vary from 16 million to 40 million. If these projects
were inspired by dreams of equality, India’s large dams have instead entrenched some of the most intractable forms of inequality. Those most likely to
be uprooted, and least likely to be compensated for their loss of land and livelihood and the rupture of their bonds of community, are marginalized
indigenous communities. Even so, government leaders, engineers and private contractors remain wedded to the promise of large dams. The Himalayas
are the next frontier. Until the 1980s, the upper reaches of the great Asian rivers appeared too remote and too expensive to engineer. New demands
for water and electricity changed the calculus of costs and benefits. So did new infrastructure. From 1960 to 1980, the Himalayan nations built 6,200
miles of road in the region, making it more accessible for dam builders. The steep drops as the rivers descend from the mountains augment their

hydropower potential. But the Himalayan projects are especially risky , for three reasons. The first is
geopolitical. Taken together, the Himalayan rivers flow through at least 16 countries. In the
absence of coordinated planning, dam building becomes a zero-sum game in which downstream
users lose out . India fears the construction of a large dam on the Chinese side of the border would affect
the flow of the Brahmaputra; Bangladesh, in turn, would bear the consequences of Indian dams on the same

river. The potential for conflict looms . Water for Half a Billion People Major river systems originating in the
Himalayas, where many countries are racing to build dams. [Interactive Omitted] The second reason is ecological . The

Himalayan region contains an extraordinary concentration of biodiversity. An estimated 660 square miles of
forest will be submerged or damaged by the planned dam projects. The snow leopard, the brown bear, the snow trout and the golden mahseer fish are
among the threatened mountain species endangered by these plans. And
the third relates to natural hazards. The dam
projects are at risk of collapse from earthquakes in this seismically active region and of breach
from flood bursts from glacial lakes upstream. The risks are likely to intensify with climate change as areas of the Himalayas
warm faster than many other parts of the world. As the glaciers melt more quickly, the Himalayan rivers are projected initially to swell and then, by
midcentury, to experience diminished flow. Ecologists
and environmental campaigners charge that the new
dam projects have not taken climate change adequately into account in their calculations of
river flow, silt loads and energy potential. Dams also threaten to intensify flooding downstream during intense downpours
when reservoirs overflow.

Indian dam construction sparks Pakistani backlash – water wars go nuclear – it’s
codified in Pakistani nuclear doctrine.
Mehsud and Khan, 19 (Muhammad Imran Mehsud and Tariq Anwar Khan,*Authors are PhD
Scholar, School of Politics and International Relations, Quaid I Azam University Islamabad and
Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Hazara University Mansehra. "Water War Thesis:
Perspective from South Asia", Journal of Political Studies, 31 December 2019, accessed: 6-22-
2021///OK

The upper riparian's hydro-hegemony China is upper riparian to India. River Indus, Brahmaputra and Ganges flow from Chinese territory
of Tibet into India. As discussed earlier, Indian media and think tanks have already expressed their lower riparian anxieties and alleged China of
pursuing hydro-hegemony. Similarly, Indiais upper riparian to Pakistan and Bangladesh on the stated rivers.
Pakistan and Bangladesh have expressed displeasure with the Indian
Both the lower riparians of

upstream hydro-behavior . However, Pakistan in particular is vocal in this regard. Pakistan has alleged India of
storing and diverting the western rivers, entitled to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty, to
achieve hydro-hegemony against downstream arch-rival Pakistan. Pakistan fears that the Indian
dams on the western rivers, few of them already built and many more yet to be built could be a source of
downstream Pakistan's economic and strategic vulnerabilities . The dams will empower India to
store water and use the same as a weapon against Pakistan. The stored waters could be used to
destroy the agrarian based economy of Pakistan by either withholding waters or releasing the same to
flood downstream vast agriculture lands of Pakistan. The same dams could pose strategic threat to
Pakistan's territorial integrity in two ways. First, by withholding the waters through the dams,
Pakistan's defense canals, built on the eastern India-Pakistan border, could be turned futile and easily
crossable. These canals had served as Maginot Lines against the Indian attack on Pakistan in 1965 and had, thus, served as a strong
bulwark against the Indian invasion (Nawaz, 2008). Two, the Indian dams could be used to release waters
in its natural course of the western rivers and trap Pakistani forces in between the vast lands between the rivers
and, thus, reduce Pakistan's armed forces strategic maneuverability. For Pakistan, the Indian assistance to
Afghanistan's dams on the river Kabul is the extension of Indian hydro-hegemony from Kashmir to Kabul. In order to withstand any future Indian hydro-

Pakistan has added a strong hydrological dimension to its nuclear

aggression of one kind or another,

doctrine . One of the four nuclear red lines elaborated in its nuclear is about Indian attempt at
stemming the water flow into Pakistan. Pakistan has made it clear that in case India stemmed the flow of
water into Pakistan, it will retaliate with nuclear weapons (Kumar-Sinha, 2008). Political atmosphere
laced with such strategic posturing on the part of Pakistan and Indian threats of stemming the water , and that

too from a Premier, leaves the water war thesis at the heart of the regional political terrain. Political

atmosphere South Asia is a region rampant with political trust deficit on many fronts. India and Pakistan have

many nettlesome political disputes like Kashmir that had already triggered two total wars in 1948, in 1965 and one half-war in
1999, Siachen Glacier, Rann of Kach, and mutual allegations of involvement in cross border
terrorism. Similar political trust deficit reigns in India-Bangladesh and India-Nepal political disputes. Pakistan and Afghanistan are also lacking trust
due to the Durand Line issue. China and India too are bound to compete and contest in the long run with many unresolved border disputes and mutual
contradictory territorial claims. All
these issues have created a gulf of political trust deficit amongst the
nations of South Asia and this lack of trust has spilled over unto water disputes as well. Unless
the regional political environment improves, water war thesis will remain relevant in the international hydro
politics of South Asia. Hydrological dimension of international political disputes Recent research on the hydro-politics of South Asia have discovered
interesting hydrological dimension to the political disputes discussed in the preceding section. The Kashmir dispute, for instance, is
projected in many facets as an ideological feud, a proxy war, a freedom movement, a case of state terrorism and many more. However, it is the

waters of Kashmir that has made the region of Kashmir precious for both India and Pakistan. It
was, indeed, “not sheer coincidence” that a regular division of Pakistani military entered Kashmir after the Indian Punjab

government stem the flow of few of the canals flowing into Pakistan on April 1, 1948 (Wirsing, 2008). Similarly,
Pakistan's proposal of dividing Kashmir across the Chenab river at many occasions from 1950s until Pervez Musharraf proposed Chenab formula speak
volumes for the fact under discussion (Bisht, 2011). Equally
visible has the issue of immigration between India and
Bangladesh a strong hydrological aspect. Indian stemming of waters through the Farrakha
barrage has caused downstream effects on fisheries and agriculture and resultantly people are
immigrating into India for livelihood. The issue of Kalapani between India and Nepal also has a strong hydrological dimension. Dr
Iram Khalid of the Department of Political Science at the University of Punjab has brought to fore this fact that the region of Kalapani is origin to many
rivers thereby making the control of the region precious for both the states of India and Nepal (Khalid, 2010). Therefore,
with looming
water crises, these political disputes have the potential to unfold itself more clearly in terms of
water and thus result in wars with clear water objectives and strategies .

Indo-Pak war instantly kills millions and triggers nuclear winter – turns climate,
biodiversity and food wars.
Bendix, 19 (Aria Bendix, is a Senior Reporter at Insider, covering urban and environmental
science. "If India and Pakistan have a nuclear war, scientists say it could trigger Ice-Age
temperatures, cause global famine, and kill 125 million people", Business Insider, 10-3-2019,
https://www.businessinsider.com/india-pakistan-nuclear-war-death-famine-2019-10, accessed:
6-29-2021///OK

[edited for ableist language]

Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir , a disputed territory to which both nations lay claim.
Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan, recently suggested the countries could be headed toward another. "There is a potential that

two nuclear-armed countries will come face to face at some stage," Khan said at the United Nations annual summit in
September, referring to the Kashmir conflict. Together, India and Pakistan possess 2% of the world's nuclear arsenal: India is estimated to

have around 140 nuclear warheads, while Pakistan is estimated to have around 160. But
they're in an arms race to acquire more weapons. By 2025, India and Pakistan could have
expanded their arsenals to 250 warheads each, according to a new paper that predicts what might happen if the two nations
entered into a nuclear war. In that extreme scenario, the researchers write, a cloud of black soot could

envelop the sky, causing temperatures to fall dramatically. Key agricultural hotspots would lose
the ability to grow crops, triggering a global famine . " It would be instant climate change ," Alan
Robock, an author of the study, told Business Insider. "Nothing like this in history, since civilization was developed, has happened." His paper estimates
that up to 125 million people could die. Nuclear weapons are becoming more powerful Robock said the
situation outlined in the paper isn't likely, but it's possible. So to determine the hypothetical consequences of a nuclear war between Pakistan and
India, the researchers sought the advice of military experts. "We clearly don't want to burn cities and see what would happen," Robock said. "Most
scientists have test tubes or accelerators. Nature is our laboratory, so we use models." The paper doesn't speculate as to which nation is more likely to
initiate a conflict. But it estimates that if India wanted to destroy Pakistan's major cities, the nation would need to deploy around 150 nuclear weapons.
The calculations assume that some of these weapons might miss their target or fail to explode, so the model is based on the explosion of 100 weapons
in Pakistan. If Pakistan attacked India's major cities, the researchers estimated, about 150 nuclear
weapons would likely go off. If all of those bombs were 15-kiloton weapons — the size of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, Japan — the researchers predict that 50 million people would die. But Robock said the US' nuclear weapons today are around 100 to 500
kilotons, so it's likely that India and Pakistan will have acquired more powerful weapons by 2025, the year in which his simulation takes place. If the
nations were to use 100-kiloton weapons, the study suggests, that conflict could kill about 125 million people. A
nuclear war between
India and Pakistan could wreck Earth's climate Nuclear explosions produce sweltering heat.
Structures catch on fire, and then winds either spread those flames or the fire draws in the
surrounding air, creating an even larger blaze known as a firestorm. Either way, enormous amounts
of smoke would enter the air, the researchers write. A small portion of this smoke would contain "black
carbon," the sooty material that usually comes from the exhaust of a diesel engine. That substance would then get pumped
through the troposphere (the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere) and into the stratosphere.
Within weeks, black carbon particles could spread across the globe. It would be "the biggest
injection of smoke into the stratosphere that we've ever seen ," Robock said. Smoke particles can
linger in the stratosphere for about five years and block out sunlight. In Robock's simulation, that could
cause Earth's average temperature to drop by up to 5 degrees Celsius. Temperatures could get "as
cold as the Ice Age ," he said. With less energy from the sun, the world could also experience up to 30% less
rain. The researchers estimate that it would take more than a decade for temperatures and precipitation to return to normal. In the meantime,
farmers around the world — especially in India, China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, tropical South
America, and Africa — would struggle to grow food . Entire marine ecosystems could also be
devastated, which would destroy local fishing economies. In sum, the authors write, a nuclear war could
trigger mass starvation across the globe. "As horrible as the direct effects of nuclear weapons would be, the indirect effects on
our food supply would be much worse," Robock said. This isn't the first time Robock has modeled this type of scenario: In 2014, he contributed to a
paper that predicted what would happen if India and Pakistan deployed 50 weapons apiece, each with the strength of a "Little Boy" atomic bomb.
Even that "limited" nuclear-war scenario, he found, would cripple [crush] the ozone layer, expose
people to harmful amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and lower Earth's surface temperatures for
more than 25 years. But those explosions wouldn't release nearly as much black carbon as the scenario in the newer model, so the cooling
effect wouldn't be as severe.

Asia models US dam policy

Purtill ’12 (Corinne Purtill; experienced freelance journalist, previously a senior reporter for Quartz and a senior
correspondent for GlobalPost; 12-20-2012; "Don't repeat our mistakes on dam building, US urges Asia"; China Dialogue;
https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/5505-don-t-repeat-our-mistakes-on-dam-building-us-urges-asia/; Accessed 6-21-2021;
RD) ///AES

When confronted with criticism of proposed dams, hydropower boosters in Asia and beyond have often
pointed to the example of American hydropower. If the US dammed their rivers, the argument
goes, then why shouldn’t we? “Look at all the hydropower in the world,” said Viraphone Viravong, a vice
minister in Laos’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, at an October forum on that country’s controversial dam plans. “If
[these dams] are so bad, why don’t you decommission all of them?” In an attack on opponents of
Chinese dam plans in the country’s water-rich south west in May, Zhang Boting, deputy secretary general of the China
Society for Hydropower Engineering, also pointed to the US to show that dam cascades were common practice,
The US has learned quite a lot
stating (incorrectly) that the Tennessee River alone has 70 hydroelectric dams.
during a century of dam building . While many projects have yielded valuable energy, flood
control and irrigation benefits, hydropower advocates abroad often fail to note how much
money and effort the US has spent undoing the damage of poorly conceived dams. The US
demolished its 1,000th dam in 2011, with 430 removed just in the last decade. Removing dams is
expensive – sometimes astonishingly so – but government and environmental leaders alike say that some dams prove
simply too harmful to keep. To countries just beginning to experiment with large-scale hydropower,
US scientists, environmentalists and government officials all caution: don’t make the same
errors we did. "We’ve learned some hard lessons about what happens when you make certain
infrastructure decisions,” US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told a gathering of Mekong region leaders in July.
“I’ll be honest with you, we made mistakes.”
 Scenario 2 – Turkey
New Turkish hydro dams spur water wars and make state failure inevitable
Connor Dilleen 19, 11-6-2019, "Turkey’s Dam-Building Could Create New Middle East
Conflict," Maritime Executive, https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/turkey-s-dam-
building-could-create-new-middle-east-conflict///OK

Countries across the Middle East are facing a bleak future of declining rainfall, diminishing surface- and
groundwater supplies, and increasing desertification. Since 1998, the region has faced the worst drought conditions in 900 years; it is home to 10 of the
17 countries that are currently facing ‘extremely high’ water stress .
Soaring temperatures across the region—average
summer temperatures are predicted to rise by 4°C by 2050 even if global rises are limited to 2°C—are increasing
evaporation of surface water, forcing an over-reliance on aquifers and groundwater supplies that are

already at risk of over-exploitation. Between 2003 and 2010, parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates
river basins lost 144 cubic kilometers of total stored freshwater; 60 percent of that loss was attributed to the pumping of groundwater from
underground reservoirs. Given
this backdrop, it’s alarming that the impact of the Middle East’s climatic
conditions on water supplies is being exacerbated by dam projects that will worsen the
already acute water stress and land degradation that is jeopardizing agriculture across the
region. Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project is one of the largest and most controversial
dam-building programs globally . Twenty-two dams are slated to be constructed along the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers near Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq. The project has attracted the ire
of countries across the Middle East since its inception because of the impact it will have on
critical water supplies in Turkey’s southern neighbours . In recent months Ankara has commenced filling the Ilisu Dam,
the largest dam in the proposed network, further focusing attention on its actions and inflaming already tense relations with its neighbours.

Turkey’s dam and hydropower constructions on the Tigris and Euphrates are estimated to
have cut water to Iraq by 80 percent since 1975, jeopardizing agriculture and natural habitats .
Iraq has also been adversely affected by dam projects and agricultural developments in Iran. As a result of declining water, desertification, salination
and mismanagement, Iraq is currently losing an estimated 25,000 hectares of arable land annually, mostly in the south of the country. Syria has also
been directly impacted by Ankara’s dam-building projects, which have reduced water flows to Syria by an estimated 40 percent. This has been
particularly problematic for Damascus, as water scarcity is more severe in Syria than in either Turkey or Iraq. The long drought that started in 2006
devastated Syria’s agriculture and forced large numbers of people into cities. It has also been linked to the social upheaval and unrest that led to the
civil war in Syria. By 2011, Syria’s total annual water withdrawal as a percentage of internal renewable water resources had reached 160 percent,

compared with 80 percent in Iraq and 20 percent in Turkey. Iran

has also criticized Turkey’s dam-building program,
claiming that the Ilisu Dam poses ‘a serious environmental threat to Iraq and eventually Iran by
reducing the entry of Tigris water to Iraqi territory by 56 percent’ . Iran is facing a broader crisis in its water
supplies—12 of its 31 provinces are expected to have exhausted their groundwater reserves within the next 50 years. Tehran has also predicted a
decline in surface-water runoff from rainfall and snow melt of 25 percent by 2030. These trends make the water supplied by the Tigris even more
critical to the functioning of Iran’s agriculture. Clearly, the Middle East is facing a broad range of climatic and environmental issues, which collectively

the most critical problem is water security , and the

pose potentially existential challenges for the countries of the region. But

transboundary Tigris–Euphrates river system is a central component of that. Turkey holds almost all of the cards on this

issue : it controls 90 percent and 44 percent, respectively, of the waterflows of the Euphrates
and the Tigris. Over the past 20 years or so, however, Ankara has been dismissive of demands from its
neighbours for a formal water-sharing agreement to regulate the flows in the Tigris–Euphrates
system. Regional instability and political tensions arising from Turkey’s incursions into
northern Syria in recent weeks make the prospect of a negotiated water-sharing agreement
between Turkey and its southern neighbours remote. There’s also a risk that Ankara will ‘weaponise’
water in future disputes with its neighbours, using its control over riverine water supplies as a
lever. Turkey has been accused of ‘manipulating the present regional instability to further its
agenda in the crisis-ridden Middle East, including by pursuing its ambitious plans to be a
regional “water superpower” that could give it main control over the region’s waters’ . The US
intelligence community’s now-dated 2012 global water security assessment noted that while water-related state-on-state conflict was unlikely within

the decade to 2022, the use of water as a weapon would become more likely beyond that time frame.
It also noted that ‘ water problems —when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental

degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions— contribute to social

disruptions that can result in state failure’ . All of those ingredients are already apparent across the Middle East, and Turkey’s
dam-building program will create further water stress, inflaming an already fragile situation. Water has featured throughout the

region’s history as both a weapon of war and a trigger of conflict. In the past 60 years alone, there have been
at least 25 instances in which water has been a trigger for conflict between communities and
between states. Fortunately, the last case of an actual war between states over water occurred over 4,500 years ago. But given the current
environmental and climatic context and the lack of space for political and diplomatic solutions to water disputes, the Southeastern Anatolian Project
may prove to be a game-changing factor. It
not only increases the risk of water-related state failure similar to
what occurred in Syria, but also heightens the risk that the Middle East could move from
tensions over water to actual war .

Turkey’s weaponization of water has exacerbated instability in the region – US

expertise is necessary to calm the waters
Glynn 21 – Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Ph.D., Vanderbilt, B.A., UCLA (Sarah, 6-
14-2021, " Turkey is reportedly depriving hundreds of thousands of people of water," Open
Democracy, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/turkey-reportedly-
depriving-hundreds-thousands-people-water///OK

The deliberate withholding of water from hundreds of thousands of people should be headline news. But
not, it seems, if the people affected live in the unrecognised Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known to many as Rojava. And not if
the nation holding back the water is a member of NATO. Most people are unaware that, since the end of January, Turkey
has reportedly
broken its 1987 agreement with Syria and Iraq to ensure a minimum flow of 500 cubic metres
per second of the Euphrates River to Syria, 60% of which goes on to Iraq. Instead, it is letting
less than 200 cubic metres through to Syria, according to Kurdish authorities and NGOs, leading to a severe decline
in the water levels and threatening a major humanitarian crisis . While this has been largely ignored by the
mainstream media, it has been well chronicled by local media outlets. Meanwhile, Turkey denied any wrongdoing and accused

the Kurds of deliberately causing the shortage . There are many international actors in the region and they cannot be unaware
of what is happening. Their silence amounts to complicity. Weaponising water Geography has given Turkey control of more than 90% of the water that

flows into the Euphrates and 44% of that in the Tigris. For
decades, Turkish water policy has been characterised by
a disregard for the needs of those downstream in Syria and Iraq . But what is happening now is more than
selfishness. Turkey may not currently be officially at war with North and East Syria – where Kurds and their allies have established an autonomous

The nation is now weaponising the water of the

region – but in practice, Turkey’s war against the Kurds never stops.

Euphrates, knowing that withholding water is a war crime. In a region where temperatures often exceed 35°C, and in
the middle of a pandemic, water is in limited supply, is hard to access, and is increasingly polluted and infected. Due to the diversion of water, 30 out of
200 pumping stations no longer work, and others are operating at half capacity, reports the Rojava Information Center, a local news agency. In many
places, water is having to be brought by tankers . Half a million people have already been left
without safe drinking water, and a further 5 million have been put at risk of losing access. S ome
who can afford it have paid for new deep wells, but these threaten to deplete groundwater reserves. This region was once the

breadbasket of Syria, but agriculture has been badly hit by a lack of water , and wheat may
now have to be imported for both flour and seed. Unusually low rainfall has made the lack of
irrigation even more devastating. The consequences of the water shortage are already biting: yields are low, some crops are
not harvestable and fit only for grazing, others were not even planted. Farmers are failing to pay their
debts, and with fodder costs rising, shepherds have been forced to sell off their animals at low prices. Fishermen have nothing to catch, and there is
nowhere that fish can breed to regenerate stocks. The region relies on hydroelectricity for 80% of its power. In 2017, ISIS attempted to destroy the
turbines, but the autonomous administration repaired the damage as best they could with the parts available to them. Now, though, there is only
enough water for the great dams to run a single turbine at a time. Instead of 500 megawatts, output could be down to less than 100. Severe power
rationing impacts life at every level, from the home to the wider economy. Those who can, spend their money on generators and black-market oil,
while others just have to wait. If power becomes too low to pump out the water and keep the machinery of the turbines dry, these could suffer long-

Turkey-backed militias have also been diverting water from the Khabur River,
term damage. Recently,

which runs through the east of Syria before joining the Euphrates just south of Deir ez-Zor. The Syrian city of Hasakah and its
surroundings have had only intermittent water supplies ever since Turkey captured the Alouk pumping station in 2019. Environmental destruction
The water siege isn’t the only way in which Turkey has used environmental degradation as a
weapon of war against the Kurds. In fact, Turkey has also been accused of deliberately flooding Kurdish lands in Syria; and the dams
themselves, which are in Northern Kurdistan (south-east Turkey), have served as a means for disrupting Kurdish settlement, culture and natural
landscape – especially the recently completed Ilisu Dam, which drowned the 12,000-year-old town of Hasankeyf. Trees are another target. In the 1990s,
the Turkish government broke up the long-established patterns of rural life, destroying thousands of Kurdish villages and forcing hundreds of thousands
of Kurds to leave their land and take refuge in the cities. Now, Turkey is reportedly attempting to drive away those who remained, or have returned, by
destroying the natural environment that the Kurds hold dear and that provides their livelihood. They have uprooted thousands of trees and burned
acres of forest. Environmental
destruction is a tool of oppression and ethnic cleansing but also a
source of short-term gain. Afrîn – the westernmost canton of the autonomous region of Syria, which Turkey occupied in 2018 – has lost
half a million of its famous olive trees and also large areas of forest. The Turkish military, which is now invading the mountains of the Kurdistan Region
of Iraq, is destroying orchards and vineyards and burning woodland, and has been photographed removing truckloads of felled trees. Around harvest
time, villagers of North and East Syria have to keep a constant vigil in their fields against arson by Turkey’s mercenaries. Turkish backed militias have
turned life in Afrin into one of constant fear of torture, kidnapping, and death. This attack on basic services is intended to undermine the autonomous
administration and sow unrest and division. Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian backers also welcome any potential weakening of support
for the autonomous administration, and, even though the cuts will also affect government-controlled areas, there has only been a single protest
reported from the Syrian government. The
water shortage is also being felt further downstream in Iraq,
where a weak government has little clout against its aggressive neighbour . Last week, Mustafa Ito, co-chair
of Kobani Region Council in North and East Syria, criticised “the international silence towards Turkey’s seizure of water from the region, because this is
taking place in front of everyone’s eyes, such as Russia, the Global Coalition, the United Nations and other world powers.” Turkey is in economic

If the US decided to apply pressure, it would be hard for

difficulties and is looking for international friends.

Turkey to ignore . It seems that, yet again, the US has focused on winning a war, but given little thought
to securing a subsequent peace . If Turkey is left to continue its effective siege of the region,
the potential for greater instability and for the resurgence of ISIS or similar groups will
increase , especially as these are actively encouraged by Turkey , which uses the jihadi gangs as mercenaries. Last
summer, the Solidarity Economy Association and a number of small independent NGOs in Europe raised money for vital water projects in North and
East Syria. A representative of the Water for Rojava Europe Committee, explained that, “To confront the water cuts by Turkey and increasing droughts
due to the climate crisis, technical responses are not sufficient. Political answers are needed.” “The £110,000 [we] raised is a tiny sticking plaster on a
gaping wound, now the situation is many times worse than a year ago, the water crisis is escalating, and we see no trace of this in mainstream media,”
she added. The ongoing water war is about more, even, than the destruction of people’s lives and the risks of a dangerous future. It is also an attack on
the Kurdish autonomous political experiment taking place in North and East Syria, which has been a source of inspiration to so many, including in
Turkey itself. A Turkish victory would crush that. Not the ideas, but the hope generated by a living example.

Iraq-Syria water deprivation ensure middle east water wars

Tom O'Connor, 7-27-2018, "Are Syria, Iraq and Turkey headed for a "water
war"?," Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/war-water-syria-iraq-turkey-
will-next-fight-rivers-report-says-1046349
The next war in the Middle East could be fought over water as Iraq, Syria and Turkey scramble
to assert claims to two vital rivers that run through the region, according to a new report. Nabil al-Samman, a
Syrian expert on international waters, made the case for an upcoming "water war" in an article published Friday by Saudi newspaper

Asharq Al-Awsat. The article defines the term as being used to refer in the Mediterranean to "the use

of water as a weapon in order to control its sources, or the diversion of water as a commercial
commodity controlled by powerful upstream states for political ends." The piece outlines a decades-long
history of difficult relations and devastating conflicts that have set the stage for a potential upcoming crisis

between Syria, Iraq and Turkey. "When the sounds of guns and war drums fade in Syria and Iraq, new tensions may
arise because of water, especially in their conflict with Turkey , from which the Euphrates and
Tigris rivers flow," the report read. In eastern Syria's Euphrates River Valley, drought and mismanaged government policies helped fuel
support for protests that eventually morphed into a 2011 nationwide insurrection backed by the West, Turkey and Gulf Arab states. The

subsequent insurgency and Syrian military's campaign backed, by Russia and Iran, to retake the
country has left critical water infrastructure in ruins. Across the border in western Iraq, 15
consecutive years of war and insurgency following the 2003 U.S. invasion have left a similarly
dire situation, but Turkey retains a powerful, controversial hold on the region's natural
resources. Just as the Syrian and Iraqi governments appear to be regaining a grasp of their
respective countries, Turkey has pushed forward with the Southeastern Anatolia Project, an ambitious
initiative to build 22 dams and 19 power plants that could curb water flow into the
downstream states by as much as half. The idea was originally crafted by the modern founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
—and current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to cement the project's completion. For decades, the project

stirred tensions between the neighboring countries, but political disputes have prevented
negotiations from ever making progress. In addition to differences over the amount of water that would flow into Syria, the
two countries have also quarreled over Damascus's claims to Turkey's southwestern Hatay Province and over Syria's alleged protection of Kurdish
separatists that have waged war on the Turkish state. After holding talks in 1962, both countries began rounds of negotiations over water distribution
that progressed as relations improved when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000. However, Turkey's
support for Syrian
rebels and ongoing occupation of parts of northern Syria have prevented the two from
restarting talks. Syria and Iraq have their own long history of diplomatic failures that played out
for decades as opposing factions of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party . The two governments also held talks in 1962
and attempted to settle find common ground over the Euphrates River that runs through their countries—and continued to do so through the 1990s.
Since the U.S. ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, relations between Baghdad and Damascus have been enhanced. Iraq has attempted to
maintain relations with both Syria and Turkey, but, like Syria, has at times criticized Turkey for military incursions against Kurdish militias in Iraq. In what
the article calls "the absence of an Iraqi-Syrian agricultural strategy," Ankara has maintained its dominance over the rivers. As the report notes,
Turkey argues it's entitled to more water because its land is more fertile and has wielded
control over the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in the water-scarce Middle East , similar to
the way in which the monarchies of the Gulf have exploited their vast, lucrative reserves of oil. Upon the opening of the Atatürk dam in 1992—a major
part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project—the article quoted then-Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel proclaimed as saying: "The water that
flows to Turkey from the Euphrates, Tigris and its tributaries is Turkish...We are not saying to Syria and Iraq that we share their oil resources...They have
no right to say that they share our water resources." The
conflict became so serious that, in 2010, a scenario drawn
up by the U.S.-led Western NATO military alliance, of which Turkey is a member, imagined a
joint Iraq-Syria invasion of Turkey, according to the Middle East Policy Council. Today, the chance of war-weary Iraq and Syria
engaging in such a conflict are slim, according to the Asharq Al-Awsat report, but residents of both countries are increasingly feeling the pain. In Iraq,
Turkey's construction of the Ilısu dam means the restarting of a pump at the Mosul Dam—which was recaptured from the Islamic State militant group
(ISIS) in 2014—may not be enough to resuscitate the barren fields of the once-luscious Nineveh plains, as Reuters reported last month. The Financial
Times further explored earlier this month how Iraq was racing to revamp its aging, damaged irrigation system to make up for anticipated losses in water
flow to the Tigris River. In Syria, another former ISIS-held dam has become a major point of talks in the nation's ongoing civil war. The pro-Syrian
government campaign has retaken most of the country, leaving only pockets of jihadi and rebel control, along with about a quarter in the hands of the
U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Unlike the largely Sunni Muslim Arab opposition, the mixed Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have sought
to negotiate with the government. On Friday, a delegation of their political wing went to Damascus to discuss the transfer of control of key points,
including the Tabqa dam, which lies on the banks of the Euphrates and Syria's largest reservoir, Lake Assad.

Middle East war escalates---goes nuclear

- Escalation scenario that concerns only Sryia, Iran, and Turkey

Alex Lantier 19, PHd @ Geneva, Freelance Journliast that reports on Middle Eastern foreign
affairs; “Syrian army, Iran threaten counterattack against Turkish invasion of Syria”; World
Socialist Web Site; 10-14-2019; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/10/14/syri-
o14.html//AES

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought
with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger. At the same time, military tensions
between Iran and Saudi Arabia are surging amid mutual attacks on tankers carrying Persian Gulf
oil supplies that are critical to the world economy. Last month, the US and Saudi governments blamed a
September 14 missile attack on Saudi oil facilities that caused a sharp rise in world oil prices on Iran, without
providing any evidence. Then on October 11, two missiles hit the Iranian tanker Sabiti off Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea
coast. Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, said yesterday that Iran would
retaliate against unnamed targets for the attack on the Sabiti. “A special committee has been set up to investigate the
attack on Sabiti... Its report will soon be submitted to the authorities for decision,” Shamkhani told Fars News.
“Piracy and mischief on international waterways aimed at making commercial shipping insecure
will not go unanswered.” Saudi officials declined to comment on the Sabiti attack, and officials with the US Fifth
Fleet in the Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain claimed to have no information on it. But there is widespread
speculation in the international media that the attack was carried out by Saudi Arabia or with its
support. The conflicts erupting between the different capitalist regimes in the Middle East pose
an imminent threat not only to the population of the region, but to the entire world. Workers
can give no support to any of the competing military plans and strategic appetites of these
reactionary regimes. With America, Europe, Russia and China all deeply involved in the proxy
war in Syria, a large-scale Middle East war could strangle the world oil supply and escalate into
war between nuclear-armed powers. The working class is coming face to face with the real
possibility of a Third World War. The Kurdish-led SDF militias in Syria, vastly outgunned by
Turkish forces and vulnerable to air strikes, warned US officials in talks leaked by CNN that they
would appeal for Russia to attack Turkey and protect SDF and Syrian army forces. As Turkey is
legally a NATO ally of Washington and the European powers, such an attack could compel the
United States and its European allies to either break the 70-year-old NATO alliance or go to war
with Russia to protect Turkey.

Turkey empirically models US federal dam policy

Lombaro ’20 (Joseph Lombardo; senior analyst for Turkish Heritage Organization, received his PhD in Politics from the New
School for Social Research in 2018; 12-2-2020; "Power and Politics of Turkey’s Ongoing Hydroelectric Projects"; Turkish Heritage
Organization; https://www.turkheritage.org/en/publications/analysis-by-tho-contributors-and-liaisons/the-power-and-politics-of-
turkeys-ongoing-hydroelectric-projects--an-interview-with-dr-arda-bilgen-9175; Accessed 6-23-2021; RD)///AES

Earlier this year, Turkish President Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan announced the powering of the Ilisu
Dam along the Tigris River, inaugurating the start of Turkey’s fourth-largest dam. The declaration,
however, comes amidst much negative press over the past decade, as local communities and environmental activists
view the Ilisu as an unnecessary addition to the country’s already massive hydroelectric energy portfolio. The country
is no stranger when it comes to consternation over its dams. Since the 1960s, Turkey’s politicians and planners have
envisioned dams not merely as sources of energy, but also of expanding its political reach in the country’s
underdeveloped East. Yet this situation was not entirely isolated, and in fact pointed to
aspects of
regional planning and water resource management as exported by the United States. One of the
early objectives of regional planners in Ankara was to identify countries which had somehow
overcome their own domestic, regional social and economic disparities. Among those which
surfaced as possible models was the US Bureau of Reclamation, has played a vital role in how
Turkish planners historically have addressed their riparian needs and economic development.
And so programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam, among others, were
meticulously observed throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Throughout the 1960s and
especially 1970s, American engineers were contracted through Turkey’s State Hydraulic Works
to make recommendations on what would become the Keban Dam, the first of the country’s mega-
dams which would populate the rivers and valleys of Eastern Anatolia. I recently spoke to Dr. Arda Bilgen, whose work
on Turkish dam-building looks at the political and social impact of hydraulic infrastructure in the Turkish East.
 Advantage 2 – Salmon
Dams disrupt river ecosystems and undermine salmon populations --- removal
produces almost immediate results
 Innovations at home and industry are eliminating need for so many water storage dams

Yvon Chouinard 14. Founder/Owner, Patagonia. “PATAGONIA ON DAMS AND DAM

REMOVAL”. https://www.patagonia.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-patagonia-us-
Site/Library-Sites-PatagoniaShared/en_US/PDF-US/DamNation_Statements_v1.pdf. GJ

Patagonia supports a transition toward lower-impact energy and water sources that, combined
with conservation and increased efficiencies, cause less harm to ecosystems, communities and
cultures. For centuries dams have been built for flood control, irrigation, municipal water supply, and
power production. All these needs can now be met more effectively through conservation,
improved technology and better planning, without the negative and ecological impacts caused by
blocking and degrading an entire watershed. When most of us think of dams, we think big—of Hoover Dam that provides electricity to Los Angeles or
the massive hydro dams on the Columbia River. But it’s surprising to learn how many dams we have and what shape most of them are in. Of
the
more than 80,000 dams monitored by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, roughly 26,000 pose
what the Corps labels a “high” or “significant” hazard. Many dams represent a high cost for the little value they

provide. Some no longer serve any useful purpose . All dams, despite their size, have a limited life span. Only
2,540 in the U.S. produce hydropower. We recognize that traditional hydropower—using dams either large or small—avoids
some of the high carbon emissions from fossil fuels and some of the human hazards and waste issues associated with coal mining and nuclear power.

However, traditional
hydropower has its own costs. Dams contribute significantly to climate
change through the emission of methane from reservoir surfaces, turbines and spillways. Dams also
compromise the health of rivers that could otherwise mitigate some of the effects of climate
change, including droughts, floods and waterborne diseases. Dams disrupt flows, degrade water
quality, block the movement of a river’s vital nutrients and sediment, destroy fish and wildlife
habitat, and eliminate recreational opportunities . Reservoirs slow and broaden rivers, making
them warmer, reducing water quality, and harboring destructive non-native species that
disperse throughout the watershed and prey on and compete with native wildlife. The environmental,
economic, and social footprint of a dam and reservoir may run the entire length of a river from headwaters to river mouth—and beyond, by
blocking passage for keystone migratory species like salmon , which impacts not only fish but the entire surrounding
ecosystem that relies on the fish for food and nutrients. Interventions like costly fish elevators, trap-and-haul and

modified water releases do not lead to true recovery for self-sustaining wild fish populations or provide a long-term
solution to the many other negative impacts of blocking a river. These short-term band-aids, like our failing fish

hatchery system, often take valuable time and money away from real long-term solutions like
replacing dams with more effective options. Removing dams has proven to be an effective way to restore
entire watershed ecosystems, revive wild and sustainable fisheries and associated jobs, restore coastal beaches and wetlands,
improve water quality, and improve the lives of adjacent communities and native cultures . The case
for the health of fisheries is exceptionally strong. For example, a year after the removal of the Elwha Dam, the largest

run of Chinook salmon in decades returned to the river, with 75% of spawning fish observed
upstream of the former dam site. Removing dams makes economic sense as well. The River Alliance of Wisconsin estimates dam
removal to be three to five times less expensive than dam repair. There is a growing movement to remove dams where

the benefits—economic, environmental, safety, and cultural— outweigh the costs of

maintaining and retrofitting an aging dam. The movement to take out obsolete and low-value
dams is gaining momentum among their owners, federal and state agencies, non-profit groups,
and communities around the country. Patagonia is focused on the need to remove old, derelict
and particularly harmful dams, including some dams, like the four lower dams on the Snake
River, that provide marginal benefit far outweighed by the opportunities for the revival of now-
endangered wild salmon populations and the jobs and communities they support throughout the Northwest. There are a number
of specific dam removal campaigns that Patagonia has supported for many years, including: • Lower Snake River Dams: http://www.wildsalmon.org/ •
Hetch Hetchy: http://www.hetchhetchy.org/ • Matilija Dam: http://www.matilija-coalition.org/ • Englebright Dam: http://yubariver.org • Searsville
Dam: http://www.beyondsearsvilledam.org • Penobscot River Dams: http://www.penobscotriver.org • Edwards Dam:
http://www.nrcm.org/issue_edwardsdam.asp • Rogue River Dams: http://waterwatch.org With the successful implementation of new technologies and
management practices, there are a growing number of superior alternatives to dams. Innovations
have led to reduction of
water use and waste at the residential, commercial, and agricultural levels that can eliminate the need for
thousands of water storage dams. Examples include low use water fixtures at home, utilizing reclaimed
water, replacing lawns with drought tolerant landscaping , drip irrigation, and planting regionally
appropriate crops. Groundwater recharge basins and expanded flood plains along rivers can
store and filter water without huge evaporation losses experienced at reservoirs, while improving wetland habitat,
water quality, recreation, and providing natural flood protection for communities. Energy-
efficient technologies, adoption of low-impact energy sources such as solar, wind, tidal, wave,
geothermal, and biomass are helping us transition to a cleaner energy future, allowing more dams to be retired. Even
residential-size micro-hydro projects, at the very small scale, can be utilized on tiny creeks, upstream of fish migration corridors, in ways that reduce
their negative impacts.

Salmon are critically endangered and fishways aren’t sufficient

 removing dams is necessary to revitalize the whole ecosystem

Lohan, 21 (APRIL 11, 2021 6:59PM (UTC), TARA LOHAN, “Our last, best chance to save Atlantic
salmon; Atlantic salmon are perilously close to extinction in the United States,”
https://www.salon.com/2021/04/11/our-last-best-chance-to-save-atlantic-salmon_partner/,
JMP)

Atlantic salmon have a challenging life history — and those that hail from U.S. waters have seen things get
increasingly difficult in the past 300 years. Dubbed the "king of fish," Atlantic salmon once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the United States and
ranged up and down most of New England's coastal rivers and ocean waters. But dams, pollution and overfishing have extirpated them from all the region's rivers except in

Maine. Today only around 1,000 wild salmon, known as the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment, return each year from their swim to Greenland. Fewer will
find adequate spawning habitat in their natal rivers to reproduce. That's left Atlantic salmon in the
United States critically endangered . Hatchery and stocking programs have kept them from disappearing entirely, but experts say recovering

healthy, wild populations will require much more, including eliminating some of the obstacles (literally) standing in
their way. Conservation organizations, fishing groups and even some state scientists are now calling for
the removal of up to four dams along a 30-mile stretch of the Kennebec River, where about a
third of Maine's best salmon habitat remains . The dams' owner — multinational Brookfield Renewable Partners — has
instead proposed building fishways to aid salmon and other migratory fish getting around dams as they

travel both up and down the river. But most experts think that plan has little chance of success. A confusing array of state and

federal processes are underway to try and sort things out. None is likely to be quick, cheap or easy. And there's a lot at stake. "Ultimately the fate of the

species in the United States really depends upon what happens at a handful of key dams," says John
Burrows, executive director of U.S. programs at the Atlantic Salmon Federation. "If those four
projects don't work — or even if just one of them doesn't work — you could basically preclude
recovering Atlantic salmon in the United States." Prime habitat The best place for salmon recovery is in Maine's
two largest watersheds. "The Penobscot River and the Kennebec River have orders of magnitude
more habitat, production potential and climate resilient habitat" than other parts of the state , says
Burrows. The rivers and their tributaries run far inland and reach more undeveloped areas with higher elevations. That helps provide salmon with the cold, clean water they
need for spawning and rearing. Smaller numbers of salmon are hanging on in lower-elevation rivers along the coastal plain in Maine's Down East region, but climate change
could make that habitat unsuitable. "There's definitely concern about how resilient those watersheds are going to be for salmon in the future," says Burrows. "To recover the
population, we need to be able to get salmon to the major tributaries farther upriver, in places where we're still going to have cold water even under predictions with climate
change." One of those key places is the Penobscot, which has already seen a $60 million effort to help recover salmon and other native sea-run fish. A 16-year project resulted in
the removal of two dams, the construction of a stream-like bypass channel at a third dam, and new fish lift at a fourth. In all, the project made 2,000 miles of river habitat
accessible. While there's still more work to be done on the Penobscot, says Burrows, attention has shifted to the Kennebec. The river has what's regarded as the largest and best
salmon habitat in the state, especially in its tributary, the Sandy River, where hatchery eggs are being planted to help boost salmon numbers. "That's helped us go from zero
salmon in the upper tributaries of Kennebec to getting 50 or 60 adults back, which is still an abysmally small number compared to historical counts," says Burrows. "But these are
the last of the wildest fish that we have." The obstacles The Sandy may be good salmon habitat, but it's also hard to reach. Brookfield's four dams stand in the way of fish trying
to get upriver. At the lowest dam on the river, Lockwood Dam in Waterville, there's a fish lift — a kind of elevator that should allow fish that enter it to pass up and around the
dam. But if fish do find the lift — and only around half of salmon do — they don't get far. "It's a terminal lift," says Sean Ledwin, division director of Maine's Department of
Marine Resources' Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat. "The lift was never completed. So we pick up those fish in a truck and drive them up to the Sandy River." That taxi cab
arrangement isn't a long-term solution, though, and was part of an interim species protection plan. Only the second dam, Hydro Kennebec, has a modern fish passage system.
But how well that actually works hasn't been tested yet since fish can't get by Lockwood Dam. As part of a consultation process related to the Endangered Species Act,
Brookfield has submitted a plan proposing to fix the fishway at Lockwood and add passage to the third and fourth dams. But federal regulators found it inadequate. "Brookfield's
proposal was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee [which oversees hydroelectric projects] and all the [federal management] agencies," says Ledwin. The

"We have really low

company now has until May 2022 to come up with a new plan. State scientists aren't convinced Brookfield's plan would work either.

confidence that having four fishways would ever result in meaningful runs of all the sea-run fish
and certainly not recovery of Atlantic salmon ," says Ledwin. "We don't think that it's going to be
conducive to recovery." In addition to considerations related to the Endangered Species Act, Shawmut Dam, the third on the Kennebec, is currently up for
relicensing, which triggers a federal review process by FERC. And at the same time the Maine Department of Marine Resources has drafted a new plan for managing the
Kennebec River that recommends removing Shawmut Dam and Lockwood Dam. A public comment period on the proposed plan closed in March. Brookfield isn't happy with it
and responded with a lawsuit against the state. It was good news to conservation groups, however, which would like to see all four of the dams removed if possible — or at least

"There's no self-sustaining population of Atlantic salmon anywhere in the world that we

a few of them.

know of that have to go by hydro dam," says Burrows. He believes that having Brookfield spend tens of
millions of dollars on new fishways will just result in failure for salmon. It's partly a game of
numbers. Not all fish will find or use a fishway. And if you start with a low number of returning
fish and expect them to pass through four gauntlets, you won't be left with many at the end. "If
you're passing 50% of salmon that show up at the first dam, and then you've got three more dams passing 50%, that means you're left with only an eighth of the population you

"You can't start a restoration program

started with by the end," says Nick Bennett, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

where you're losing seven-eighths of the adults before they even get to their spawning habitat."
And getting upriver is just part of the salmon's journey. Juvenile salmon face threats going downstream to the ocean as

well, including predation and warm water in impoundments. They also risk being injured or
killed going through spillways or turbines. Only about half are likely to survive the four hydro
projects. Atlantic salmon, unlike their Pacific cousins, don't always die after spawning , either. So
some adults will also make the downstream trek, too. "Just looking at our reality, at least two dams need to go, hopefully three, and
it would be amazing if all four would go," says Burrows. Ecosystem restoration The fate of Atlantic salmon hangs in the balance , but

so do the futures of other fishes. The Pacific coast of the United States is home to five species of salmon. And while the Atlantic side has just the one,
it has a dozen other native sea-run species that have also seen their habitat shrink. "Those dams are preventing other native species like

American shad, alewives, blueback herring and American eel from accessing large amounts of
historic habitat," says Burrows. Ledwin says removing dams on the Kennebec could result in populations of more than a million shad, millions of blueback herring,
millions of eels and hundreds of thousands of sea lampreys. "The recovery of those species would actually help Atlantic

salmon as well because they provide prey buffers and there are a lot of co-evolved benefits," he
says. Salmon are much more successful at nesting when they can lay their eggs in old sea lamprey

nests, explains Bennett. "But sea lamprey are not good at using fish lifts and we've essentially blocked 90% of the historic sea lamprey habitat at Lockwood dam. We need to
get those fish upstream, too." Dam removal advocates don't have to look too far to find an example of how well river ecosystems respond when dams are removed. The

removal of the Edwards Dam on the lower Kennebec River in 1999 and the Fort Halifax Dam just upstream on the Sebasticook in
2008 helped ignite a nationwide dam-removal movement. It also brought back American shad, eel, two native species of

sturgeon and millions of river herring to lower parts of the watershed . "We've got the biggest
river herring run in North America now due to the dam removals," says Ledwin. "And the largest
abundance of eel we've ever seen on the lower Kennebec." The resurgence of native fishes helps
the whole ecosystem. When they returned, so too did eagles, osprey and other wildlife. "When people
see all those fish in the river and the eagles overhead, it just kind of blows their minds because they never realized what had been lost for so long in our rivers," says Burrows.
Rebuilding key forage fish like herring also benefits species that live not just in the river, but the
Gulf of Maine and even the Atlantic Ocean. The tiny fish feed whales, porpoises and seabirds. They're also used for lobster bait and can help
rebuild fisheries for cod and haddock, which has economic benefits for the region, too. "We have to rebalance the scales if we want to have marine industries and commercial
fishing industries and if we want the ecological benefits of what sea-run fisheries do for us," says Bennett.

Salmon are a keystone species --- sustain overall ecosystem

Bugas, 20 (November 13, 2020, Hannah Bugas, “Salmon: A Keystone Species; The enormous
benefit that salmon provide for countless species and the overall health and function of the
coast is what makes salmon a keystone species,” https://pacificwild.org/salmon-a-keystone-
species/, JMP)

As salmon disappear, coastal ecosystems, culture and economies are disproportionately

impacted. The enormous benefit that salmon provide for countless species and the overall health
and function of the coast is what makes salmon a keystone species — an integral species which

ecosystems depend on, with drastic changes resulting if they are removed. Each part of a
salmon’s life cycle is heavily interconnected with its surrounding environment. Pacific salmon are mostly
anadromous, meaning they are born in freshwater, migrate to the ocean, and then migrate back to freshwater, spawn and die immediately after. On
their journey to the ocean, more than 50 per cent of their diet is insects which fall into streams from surrounding tree canopies (Allan et al. 2003,
Baxter et al. 2005). Without Pacific salmon, there would be the potential for an explosion of insects, as
salmon are the main insect predator in aquatic environments . When salmon return to their
native streams to spawn, their energy-rich carcasses and eggs are consumed by a variety of
predators in coastal watersheds, including wolves, bears, and scavenging birds . In some cases, the diets of
wolves can consist of almost 50 per cent salmon, with the rest made up of small animals in their ecosystems (Stankey et al. 2017). Coastal

wolves are only one of many species that have uniquely co-evolved alongside wild salmon over
millennia. Salmon support populations of eagles, gulls, sea birds and more by providing them with

nutrients essential for overwinter survival and migrations. The amount of salmon in a stream has been shown to be an
indicator of the density and diversity in species of birds in the surrounding ecosystem (Field and Reynolds 2012). Pacific salmon

populations are important for the survival of diverse and large assemblages of resident and
migratory birds, and their disappearance would mean the decline of many bird species (Field and
Reynolds 2012). Salmon are an important source of nutrients for bears in coastal watersheds as well. The

population density of bears can be up to 20 times greater in areas where salmon are abundant ,
versus areas where they do not occur (Reimchen 2000). In areas where salmon are abundant, bears will eat an average of 15 salmon per day, a
significant portion of their diet (Reimchen 2000). Coastal bears get from 33-94 per cent of their annual protein from salmon through scavenging for
dead carcasses and capturing them in streams (Klinka and Reimchen 2009). Without
salmon as a food source, populations
of bears would become severely at-risk . Salmon play a significant role in the survival of certain
ocean species during their time in salt water . For example, the Chinook salmon are the primary prey for the southern resident
killer whale. In the past 35 years, consumption of salmon by killer whales and seals has increased by

over 25 million individual salmon, while harvest of the fish has increased despite reduction by fisheries in an attempt to recover
endangered killer whales (Chasco et al. 2017). If populations of Chinook salmon continue to decline, there will be

major correlating impacts on the food web. Some predict that certain apex predators like the
southern resident killer whale will become extinct. When salmon die at the end of their life
cycle, their carcasses provide valuable nutrients to streams and rivers, providing a significant
increase in organic matter and nutrients which is believed to enhance the productivity of the
surrounding ecosystem (Holtgrieve and Schindler 2011). These nutrients are transferred to all levels of the
food chain, and in some cases, species adjust their survival strategies to capitalize on the
additional resources (Holtgrieve and Schindler 2011). Throughout their life cycle, salmon fundamentally transform the way ecosystems
function, by playing the roles of both predator and prey, plus releasing important nutrients back in the ecosystem after they spawn.
That risks human extinction
Stephan, 13 --- broker of Eco Realty, co-hosts KWMR’s Post Carbon Radio and blogs at
MarinSonoma.com (10/24/2013, Bernie Stephan, “Protecting our salmon and our human
survival,” http://www.ptreyeslight.com/article/protecting-our-salmon-and-our-human-survival,
recut by JMP)

It’s time we valued our freshwater creeks —nature’s roads—for the value they bring in the long term. Biodiversity in
our watershed is essential for many species and is essential for ultimate human survival. We must
protect our watersheds, respecting the natural flows of water and the life they enable.
Extinction is far more serious than anyone’s financial investment. The cumulative effect of many small land
disturbances near a stream can be devastating. Land-use restrictions to protect salmon streams have successfully been implemented elsewhere in
California and around the United States. Marin’s failure to take permanent action is truly disturbing, considering that other counties and cities have
enacted stream protection measures. The need to control development, to protect Marin’s salmon, has been well understood for decades. Marin
officials have watched coho salmon populations drop by 70 percent since the 1960’s. In 2010, the nonprofit Salmon Protection and Watershed Network
sued the county for its failure to protect salmon. Marin’s Superior Court imposed a ban on new development in San Geronimo Valley pending the
adoption of an ordinance that had been promised since 1994. In June, almost two decades after the ordinance had been proposed, the Board of
Supervisors had before it a draft stream protection ordinance ready for adoption. But when it came to a vote, supervisors lacked the political courage
to protect the salmon. Instead, they chose to punt, appointing a subcommittee to make recommendations for revising the Countywide Plan once again.
We can have development setbacks for coho and all the other species that don’t recognize our surveyed boundaries. Our creeks are roads for salmon,
whose annual migrations are a marvel of nature. When my family lived on San Geronimo Creek, the sighting of salmon always lifted our spirits,
connecting us to the natural world. I envision Marin’s creeks as wildlife corridors where aquatic and terrestrial critter alike would have their needs met.
It’s time for us humans to see the bigger picture and begin limiting our development. Private property rights should take a back seat to the needs of
nature. As a working realtor, I’m still speaking up for the fish. I value their right to continue co-existing with us more highly than our right to expand real
estate development. But will our supervisors do the same? Human activity, especially land development, has been the main cause of the collapse of the
Lagunitas Creek salmon population, and sustaining the salmon requires rigorous protection along the entire length of the creek and its tributaries. As
our planet undergoes a biodiversity crisis everywhere, 16,000 species are threatened with
extinction, including 12 percent of birds, 23 percent of mammals and 32 percent of amphibians. Biologists are clear that humans are responsible
for the declines we are witnessing. The aggregate effect of all our development continues to destroy the homes and habitat of wildlife, even when we
as individuals take great care not to. We should move quickly to enact a rigorous, enforceable ordinance to protect our
salmon, or they will all be gone and the threats to human survival are not far behind. Let’s
listen to the scientists over the protestations of property owners. Let’s heed the dire warnings;
there has been enough delay already. I urge the county supervisors to exercise decisive leadership is reversing the tide that
always seems to put private property rights ahead of nature’s rights. Salmon are the biological foundation—and

keystone species—of our precious coastal ecosystems. Let’s hope the supervisors stem the tide of ecocide and side with
the fish on this important issue.

Loss of biodiversity causes extinction – it’s an impact filter and turns climate
Shende, 13 (Rajendra Madhavrao Shende (born 13 July 1949), an alumnus of Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) and former Director in United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is
currently serving as the Chairman of TERRE Policy Centre[1] which is a not-for-profit
organization engaged in the evidence-based policy development and project based advocacy on
the sustainable development; “Importance of Biodiversity Why should we care?”; October,
2013; NEWSLETERRE, Volume 11, Issue 1) KW

Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety or richness of ecosystems, species composition

therein, and their genetic diversity too. Professor Edward O. Wilson, Harvard visionary of
biodiversity, observes that the current rate of biodiversity loss is perhaps the highest since the
loss of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic era, when humans had not
appeared. He regrets that if such indiscriminate annihilation of all biodiversity from the face of
the earth happens for anthropogenic reasons, as has been seen now, it is sure to force humanity
into an emotional shock and trauma of loneliness and helplessness on this planet. He believes
that the current wave of biodiversity loss is sure to lead us into an age that may be appropriately
called the “Eremozoic Era, the Age of Loneliness.” Loss of biodiversity is a much greater threat to
human survival than even climate change. Both could act, synergistically too, to escalate human
extinction faster. Biodiversity is so indispensable for human survival that the United Nations
General Assembly has designated the decade 2011-2020 as the 'Biodiversity Decade' with the
chief objective of enabling humans to live peaceably or harmoniously with nature and its
biodiversity. We should be happy that during October 1-19, 2012, XI Conference of Parties (CoP-
11), a global mega event on biodiversity, is taking place in Hyderabad, when PAGE 2 Beware the
loss of biodiversity - Prof. Sanjeevan Raj delegates from 193 party countries are expected to
meet. They will review the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was originally
introduced at the Earth Summit or the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Ministry of Environment and Forests
(MoEF) is the nodal agency for CoP-11. Today, India is one of the 17 mega-diverse (richest
biodiversity) countries. Biodiversity provides all basic needs for our healthy survival oxygen,
food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc. Fast vanishing
honeybees, dragonflies, bats, frogs, hous e spa rrows, filt e r (suspension)-feeder oysters and all
keystone species are causing great economic loss as well as posing an imminent threat to human
peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity mission before us is to inventorise the existing
biodiversity, conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it.

Dams kill fish globally---sparks food insecurity and alternatives fail

Opperman 20 --- PhD in ecosystem science from the University of California, Berkeley, WWF’s
Global Lead Scientist for freshwater, B.S. in biology from Duke University (Jeff, 8-5-2020, "Solar
Power Can Help Halt Dramatic Decline Of Migratory Fish," Forbes,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffopperman/2020/08/05/solar-power-can-help-halt-dramatic-
decline-of-migratory-fish/?sh=17b2847948f7)HS

A report issued last week revealed that, worldwide, migratory freshwater fish have declined by 76% since 1970. This result
joins a growing and dispiriting list of dramatic declines for biodiversity and wildlife. However, it also highlights a continuing threat to

food security for many regions of the world. Freshwater fish provide the primary source of
protein for at least 200 million people globally—particularly in rural communities in Asia and
Africa—and migratory fish are often a major component of freshwater fish harvests. For example,
migratory fish represent approximately one-third of the harvest from the Mekong River basin , the

world’s largest freshwater fishery at over 2 million tons annually, nearly 20% of global
freshwater fish harvests. But what does this decline in migratory fish have to do with energy? Quite a
lot, actually. Hydropower dams are one of the primary reasons for the decline of migratory fish
– and expansion of hydropower is a key threat to some of the largest runs of migratory fish that
remain. Thus, hydropower development triggers a set of difficult tradeoffs between energy and food security. Further exacerbating the challenge,
the primary technology aimed at managing those tradeoffs— fish passage structures—has a relatively poor track

record, particularly in tropical rivers where they are now being proposed as mitigation for hydropower. The limitations of fish passage structures to
mitigate impacts on migratory fish underscore the importance of planning and investment strategies that can avoid those impacts in the first place.
There are a few key drivers that compel migratory fish to move, including access to seasonally available food resources and, crucially, specific habitats
for spawning. Citizens of the United States and Europe should be well acquainted with these needs of migratory fish and how they can clash with
hydropower dams: in
rivers across the U.S. and northern Europe, once prodigious runs of salmon have
been reduced to tiny remnants due to dams blocking access to spawning grounds . The Columbia River
provides a clear example of these conflicts and tradeoffs. Prior to dam development and other impacts, up to 16
million adult salmon typically returned to the Columbia River system each year. Today , hydropower in
the Columbia River basin generates 100 billion KW hours of electricity, 40% of annual hydropower generation in the U.S., but salmon have

dropped to 2 million returning adults, a near 90% decline. In short, migratory fish need rivers that
are free-flowing between where they start and where they want to be. Globally, only 1/3 of long rivers remain
free-flowing, and dams are the primary source of fragmentation for these rivers, with most of these being hydropower dams. This widespread loss of
free-flowing rivers is one of the key reasons that migratory fish have declined so dramatically. Do the tradeoffs between energy generation and
migratory fish need to be so severe? Much of the hope for reducing these tradeoffs has been pinned to fish
passage structures. This makes intuitive sense: if a built structure—a dam—blocks the path of migratory fish, simply build additional
structures—a fish ladder or even elevator—that can get fish over the blockage. Fish passage technologies were originally developed for salmon, and
passage designers could not have picked better candidates to throw into their engineered arenas to see if they work: salmon are strong swimmers,
famous for their leaping ability. A 2012 review of all peer-reviewed studies on fish passage performance found that fish passage worked far better for
salmon than for other types of fish; on average, structures have a 62% success rate for salmon swimming upstream. That number may sound like a
reasonable tradeoff, but consider that most rivers do not have a single hydropower dam, but rather several in a row (a sockeye salmon seeking to
return to spawning grounds of the upper Snake River must climb over twelve!). With 62% upstream success at each dam, a migrating salmon
population will be reduced to 38% of its original numbers after two dams and 23% after three.
And that rapid decline is with the species that are the Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps of fish swimmers. That same study found that all other

types of fish had an upstream success rate of only 21%. With that lower rate of success, an
upstream migrating population will have plummeted to only 4% of the number that started the
journey after only the second dam on the river (see figure below). Fish passage structures are now being proposed as
mitigation for hydropower’s impacts on fish species that have little in common with salmon. Or, rather, hundreds of fish species that have little in
common with salmon. While fish passage on a salmon river in the U.S. Pacific Northwest might be designed for ten fish species, all relatively strong-
swimming, fish passage on a river like the Mekong must accommodate hundreds of species, ranging in size from the diminutive Trey Riel, which weighs
as much as a mouse, to the massive Mekong giant catfish, which weighs as much as a grizzly bear. Some are strong swimmers, some are not. Some
swim near the surface, some near the bottom. Despite that dizzying diversity and complexity, and despite nearly no
examples of existing
projects that have solved similar challenges, fish passage structures are being offered as solutions to mitigate impacts on
migratory fish from dams including Xayaboury on the Mekong River in Laos, which began operation last year and is the first of 11 proposed dams on the
lower Mekong. During Xayaboury’s construction, Lao officials showed a video illustrating how fish would navigate the passage structures. Seeming to
acknowledge that the video revealed a complex set of challenges for fish to surmount, Reuters quoted an official as saying, “Maybe…we should be
training the fish how to use the lift.” Training programs for fish are unlikely to produce much learning . But the past
five years have offered a dramatic education in how rapidly energy options can evolve – a dramatic evolution of energy technologies that may preclude
the need for countries to try to solve tradeoffs between hydropower and fish using yesterday’s fish passage technologies.

Fish insecurity causes conflict – lays the foundation for other grievances to
escalate
Secure Fisheries 17. Secure Fisheries is dedicated to promoting sustainable fisheries across
the Somali region as a source of long-term food and economic security. The Somali fishing sector
has the potential to provide sustainable coastal livelihoods through employment opportunities
that support community resilience. “FISH, FOOD SECURITY, AND VIOLENT CONFLICT”. 12-17-20.
https://securefisheries.org/blog/fish-food-security-violent-conflict. GJ
“If you’re interested in conservation, you’d better be interested in conflict.” So argues Dr. Tim McClanahan, one of the world’s most highly cited
fisheries academics. Fisheries have the potential to provide vital protein to food insecure populations, but paradoxically many riparian communities are
food insecure. While Sub-Saharan Africa has been increasing fisheries production and fish exports to Europe and Asia, domestic fish consumption
decreased by 15% between 1990 and 2002. Lake Victoria, one of the largest lakes in the world, is simultaneously home to over 500 fish species and
bordered by communities where 65% of households are food insecure. To better understand these relationships, I spoke with Dr. Tim McClanahan, a
coral reef ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Dr. Cullen Hendrix, director of the Environment, Food and Conflict (ENFOCO) Lab at the
Korbel School at the University of Denver. Dr. McClanahan focuses on the role of Marine Protected Areas in biodiversity and fisheries, climate change,
and fisheries sustainability in coral reefs. Dr. Hendrix’s research explores political economy, food security, climate change, and political violence.
Food insecurity may be a key catalyst for armed conflict. For example, in 2008, rising food prices
fueled resentment among Syrians that eventually boiled over into a devastating civil war. Conflict in
turn fuels food insecurity, and post-conflict nations which face food insecurity are 40% more likely to regress back to conflict within 10 years. FISH AND
FOOD SECURITY What is food security and why does it matter? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines food security
as “physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets…dietary needs for an active, healthy, and rewarding life.”
According to Dr. McClanahan, food security looks at the total system and the relationship between food, people, and environment. Abundance and
stability of food supply are central to food security, which contributes to protein and food diversity. Food security is essential to
human wellbeing. The challenge of sustaining food security, measured as 2,100 calories per day, “must be met over and over, day after day, in
order to pursue any other goals,” stresses Dr. Hendrix. Insecurity may induce desperate behavior. “When people

feel insecure, they do things that are often not in the long-term interest of sustaining
resources,” according to McClanahan. It is difficult to shape behavior in favor of resource sustainability when someone is struggling to meet daily
needs. In Kenya, poor fishers with few employment alternatives are more likely to continue fishing in spite of declining catch. What is the role of
fisheries in food security? Fish
contributes to food security both directly and indirectly. It is a vital protein
source and high in healthy fats. It also provides employment for many of the world’s poor. Poor
fishers generally sell the larger, more profitable fishes and reserve small fishes for home consumption. These small fishes are consumed whole,
providing more nutrients than larger fishes. Around Lake Victoria, Nile perch (a large, white-fleshed fish) is typically exported, while dagaa (a small
minnow) is consumed locally. Consequently, McClanahan argues that to maximize food security, a fishery must maintain diversity rather than having
monolithic systems that prioritize production of high-profit fish. Food
security has not historically been a priority in
fisheries. Rather, overall fisheries productivity was the top priority. The assumption was, “If you
optimize resource extraction, the rest will take care of itself,” says McClanahan. But it doesn’t work out that way.
Integrating food security into fisheries management introduces a social component, “addressing a greater concern about equity and fairness,”

he says. This ensures that fish harvests actually reach populations in need . If fisheries are an important source of

food, why do some fishing communities face food insecurity? Sometimes, the answer is simply a lack of fish. And lack of fish profoundly

hurts the poorest, most food insecure populations. Global catch reconstructions by Thara
Srinivasan and Rashid Sumaila showed how overfishing negatively impacts food security . They
estimated 10 million metric tons of fish were lost in 2004. Translating that loss into calories, overfishing undermined food security for 20 million people
in countries where undernourishment already exceeds 5% of the population. Both Hendrix and McClanahan contend that food insecurity in fishing
communities results from a combination of localized fish or food scarcity, lack of access to markets, and few alternative livelihood options. Low levels of
education and rural isolation mean many of the world’s poor face limited employment options which makes them less resilient to food scarcity and
hence more likely to continue to fish amid scarcity. Isolation also results in lack of market access, meaning lower profits for the rural poor. Men and
women also play different roles in the fishing sector and contribute differently to food security. In East Africa, where McClanahan focuses his research,
men are more profiteering and trade on a larger scale while women contribute to food security on a local level, feeding their families and communities.
Overlooking these roles can have ramifications for food security. In fact, Geheb argues that men’s exclusive control of the Nile Perch fishery is
responsible for malnutrition around Lake Victoria. Food Insecurity and Conflict How can food security be a cause of conflict?
Food insecurity has the potential to catalyze or deter violent conflict depending on the context, and often in indirect ways. Dr. Hendrix describes three
ways food insecurity may cause conflict: 1) Appropriative
conflict (literally fighting over food), 2) Making
participation in rebel movements more attractive to young, hungry people, and 3) Generating
grievances that may be directed at governments that do not intervene to provide food Here are some
instances of these mechanisms: Some claim that fighting over fisheries resources has more to do with assumptions of scarcity and subsequent unjust
management than groups literally fighting over fish. McClanahan argues that the perception of fairness in fisheries management is one of the most
important factors contributing to violent conflict over resources. Low
fish stocks provide a foundation for resource
conflict, but the perception of inequity is the real trigger. This may amplify frustrations when an
external group partakes in unsustainable fishing practices, such as dynamite fishing in Tanzania
or in the case of corrupt governance: “If you can’t eat because someone else is paying off the government, then that creates
frustration.” In Somalia, decreasing livestock prices during drought increased the likelihood of engaging in conflict because it decreased opportunity
costs and made the benefits of joining armed groups more attractive. This mechanism is highly context specific. In Sierra Leone, the promise of food
was effective at recruiting combatants, but not in Burundi or Colombia. Between 2010 and 2012, Al-Shabaab strategically destroyed food sources, but
the effort backfired and reduced their support base. Food price spikes in 2008 were fundamental grievances that
catalyzed the Arab Spring across Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. They were also the focus of anti-
government riots in Syria. However, the actors in these scenarios were not among the most poor or food insecure. Those suffering from
severe malnourishment are not likely to engage in conflict. Dr. McClanahan believes that spikes in food prices may signal a threat

to the middle class, resulting in protests over high food prices

Food wars go nuclear

FDI 12, Future Directions International, a Research institute providing strategic analysis of
Australia’s global interests; citing Lindsay Falvery, PhD in Agricultural Science and former
Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Institute of Land and Environment, “Food and Water
Insecurity: International Conflict Triggers & Potential Conflict Points,”
http://www.futuredirections.org.au/workshop-papers/537-international-conflict-triggers-and-
potential-conflict-points-resulting-from-food-and-water-insecurity.html

There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be fought
over a lack of resources.¶ Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian
revolutions as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts are
said to have been inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the
general sense among those that attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be

significantly greater as a result of population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm
inputs, and increased affluence in the developing world.¶ In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March

2012 workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and why countries across the globe are starting to take

note. .¶ He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law

and order and migration result.”¶ “Hunger feeds anarchy.”¶ This view is also shared by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine,

writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the decades that lie ahead, then
wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow.” ¶ He continues: “An increasingly credible scenario for
World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of
resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge
armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over
dwindling resources.Ӧ As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources, either to protect or to
gain the resources for themselves.¶ Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are
going hungry.¶ A
study by the International Peace Research Institute indicates that where food
security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea
and the Balkans experienced such wars. Governments, especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this
phenomenon.¶ The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo

Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear
war.

Removal of hydro dams protects rivers and saves salmon from an extinction
vortex
Kiernan, 21 --- president and CEO of American Rivers, a national river conservation
organization (5/25/21 04:00 PM EDT, Tom Kiernan, “Rivers, hydropower and climate resilience,”
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/555296-rivers-hydropower-and-climate-
resilience///OK

The impacts of climate change, felt first and hardest on the water cycle in the form of floods
and droughts, demand that we protect and restore healthy, free-flowing rivers . In addition to
protecting rivers that provide our drinking water, irrigate crops, manage floodwaters, recharge
groundwater supplies and nurture fish and wildlife, we must reduce reliance on fossil fuels and
boost energy from renewable sources. Given the need to reduce emissions and protect healthy rivers, what role should
hydropower play? Hydropower dams will continue to play a significant role in our nation’s energy

portfolio. At American Rivers, we recognize this. But we cannot responsibly meet our nation’s 21st century
energy needs by building new dams that damage more rivers , by weakening environmental
protections designed to protect rivers from harmful dam operations , or by supporting hydropower that
perpetuates injustice. In the Pacific Northwest, a decades-long debate around the role and impacts of hydropower on the environment and Native
American tribes has been heating up literally and figuratively. In the Columbia River basin, four dams on the lower Snake River
are pushing salmon to extinction. Hydropower produced by the four lower Snake dams cannot be
considered “green” or “clean” given the cumulative, staggering impacts of these dams on the
ecosystem and salmon runs. Salmon are essential to the cultures, identities and economies of tribes across the region, and the loss of
salmon is an ongoing and devastating injustice. Scientists say that any plan to recover salmon must include the

removal of the four dams on the lower Snake, to improve river conditions and access to habitat . Climate
change is making the need for Snake River restoration urgent : The slackwater pools behind the
dams are heating up, creating lethal conditions for fish . High water temperatures in 2015 killed
over 90 percent of returning Snake River sockeye before they could make it upstream to spawn in Idaho.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forecasts that removing the four lower Snake dams would reduce
water temperatures to levels that are safer for endangered salmon, even in very hot years. The
Bonneville Power Administration and other agencies that operate the federal hydropower dams on the

Columbia and Snake rivers have spent $17 billion over 40 years on salmon recovery to avoid the
need for dam removal. These investments have been necessary but not sufficient nor successful. A recent

analysis by the Nez Perce Tribe found that many Snake River salmon populations are entering an “extinction

vortex” with nearly half of the wild spring chinook populations in the Snake River Basin nearing
a dire extinction threshold and without intervention may not persist . We need to use visionary thinking to
resolve long standing impacts of the lower Snake River dams on salmon as part of a climate wise strategy. The power produced by

these dams can be replaced with clean, reliable and affordable alternatives that will create jobs
while also helping confront the global climate crisis. Beyond replacing the power we should invest in modernizing the
region's power grid, improved battery storage, energy efficiency and demand management.

U.S. leadership to protect rivers provides critical influence to rollback dam

building globally – recent developments prove but can’t solve alone
Bardeen, 16 --- Communications Director at International Rivers (04/11/2016 - 11:24am,
Sarah Bardeen, “The Global Significance of the Klamath Agreement,”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160413075711/http://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/433-
20///AES

Last week, US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, California Governor Jerry Brown and Governor Kate
Brown of Oregon signed an agreement that will set into motion the biggest river restoration in
the history of the United States. Four aging dams will be removed from the Klamath River. The
structures have turned the river – once the third-most productive salmon fishery in the United
States (after the Columbia and the Sacramento) – into an anemic shadow of its former self. It’s a
landmark agreement, one that has moved forward despite opposition from US Congress – proving that a coalition of
farmers, native groups and a utility can find common ground in the contentious (and thirsty) American west . But the
Klamath agreement is not just a local victory – it also has global significance. The agreement
shows that the dam building boom that the United States can and may lead the way on
restoring rivers and removing dams. It is leadership that is sorely needed. For decades, the
western United States was ground zero for one of the greatest experiments humans had ever
undertaken: replumbing the world’s rivers. Driven by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of
Reclamation, the United States built hundreds of large dams, catastrophically interrupting the services rivers have
provided for eons: filtering and distributing water, creating fertile delta land, and nurturing critical habitat for flora
and fauna. As Marc Reisner catalogued so forcefully in the book Cadillac Desert, dam builders pursued these mega-
projects with little regard for whether they were needed, or what effects they would have. It was an experiment
fueled less by need than by greed – as the dam-building boom gathered steam, farmers on the East Coast were paid
to leave fertile, rain-fed land fallow, while farmers in the West were subsidized with monumentally expensive projects
to make the desert bloom. It didn’t hurt that landowners made a windfall whenever irrigation came their way.
Meanwhile, the agencies building dam developed an insatiable need to build more projects – mainly to keep all the
engineers in business. And we didn’t keep this ecosystem-devastating technology to ourselves. Throughout the
20th century, the Bureau of Reclamation busily exported dam technology to other countries
around the world, selling these life-destroying behemoths as temples to modernity. Every
developing country needed to build them, it seemed – and the countries would conveniently
give American companies fat contracts to do it. Now, a hundred years in, we see just how
destructive these projects have been. We see how they can decimate the vibrant life of a river, and literally
starve a people of their food source and cultural context. They also make people homeless: Globally, dams have
displaced an astonishing 40-80 million people. That’s nearly three times the population of
Canada. Dam-builders undertook this gargantuan effort without clearly understanding what
they would lose – the healthy, productive rivers that were once said to be so thick with fish that you could walk
across a river on their bodies. After a century of choking our rivers, fisheries up and down the West Coast are on the
verge of collapse. The sighting of a single young trout in a Bay Area creek was cause for great rejoicing – a sad
commentary on just how much has been lost. Many dams in the United States are nownearing the end
of their lifespan. Dam removals have increased in recent years, largely because these aging,
unsafe structures – many of whose reservoirs are now filled with sediment – must be taken
down for the good of the communities near them. The problem is, the Bureau of Reclamation’s
decades-long export of dam technology is still reverberating through the rest of the world. Large
dams are being planned and developed on major rivers like the Mekong, the Amazon, and the
Congo, where millions depend directly on their rivers for food and livelihoods. In a hundred years,
will these people really rejoice to see a lone fish return to a denuded, lifeless cascade of still-water reservoirs? That’s
a future we must not contemplate or allow. For decades, we invited other countries to follow our lead in dam-
building. The result has been corruption, displacement and impoverished ecosystems. Now we’ve discovered that
natural systems actually serve us best when they are left to work the way nature designed them. It’s time for the
US to export that knowledge globally, and become a global leader in the movement to restore
rivers, those unsung heroes that do so much for us. The Klamath agreement is wonderful, but
it’s only a first step.

U.S. dam removal would send

a powerful signal to other countries to reverse their dependence on
hydropower
Deans 19 - Ocean and Coastal Law Fellow at National Sea Grant Law Center, JD from Vermont
Law, B.S. in Biological Science, clerked @ Department of Interior law office (Olivia, 4/27/2019,
“All Dams will Die,” Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, https://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/blog-
search?searchTerm=All%20Dams%20Will%20Die///AES
Destruction by Hydropower Dams “We erect dams assuming that they are eternal, as if they’ll never topple over or be
dismantled or fill with sediment or lose their financial rational. Yet all dams will die.” The United States once
rapidly built hydropower dams that fractured the large and small systems of the county. In the
United States, dam development was driven by political desire to develop and settle the
western region of the country. Decades later the environmental and communities across the
U.S. feel the negative effects of the hydropower dams. It is time for the U.S. to re-evaluate the
necessity of dams and move towards a policy of dam decommissioning. The U.S. needs to be a
key player in advocating for alternative energy development in other countries so that dam
construction and policy mistakes will not continue to destroy the world’s critical ecosystems.
Dams, large and small, create sever negative effects to the environment. In the U.S., large dams have led to loss of
forests, wildlife habitat, species, biodiversity, fisheries, wetlands, riverine ecosystems, fresh water, and water quality.
Ecosystem destruction does not stop at aquatic ecosystems. Dam project negatively affect terrestrial ecosystems as
well. Many species prefer valley bottoms, so construction of storage dam and reservoir areas kills terrestrial plants
and animals and eliminates critical wildlife habitats. The problems from dams even extend to emissions of
greenhouses gases from the reservoirs created. Studies estimate that emission of greenhouse gases from dam
reservoirs contribute between 1%-28% of global emissions. One author writes, “[the world’s dams have shifted so
much weight that geophysicists believe they have slightly altered the speed of the earth’s rotation, the tilt of its axis,
and the shape of its gravitational field.” Fish are one of the most notable species affected by
hydropower dam construction and operation. Fish often need the water habitat that is located
above the hydropower dams in order to spawn and reproduce. Cold water, that the fish rely
upon for proper circulatory and nervous system functions, is located above the dams, and the
fish are often unable to reach these areas. The United States continues to spend billions of
dollars trying to mitigate fish populations disrupted by hydropower dams and have achieved
little success. “Dams are, of course, loaded weapons aimed down river, pointed at ourselves:
they’re proof of the gambling nature of the societies that build them.” Overall, the negative effects of
hydropower dams continue to disrupt and destroy critical ecosystems and species. The U.S. should consider
ecosystems values when determining whether the economic benefits of maintaining dams outweighs the severe
negative environmental and economic effects. Authority for Removal The first step in removing a hydropower dam is
to consider whether it is a federal or private dam. The Federal Power Act of 1920 was established to provide for a
federal comprehensive planning of hydroelectric power development. The purpose of the act was to balance
conflicting uses such as hydropower and wildlife preservation, to develop the “water power resources of the nation,”
and “avoid unconstitutional invasion of the jurisdiction of the states.” The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) was established to implement the Federal Power Act under 16 U.S.C. § 792. Under 16 U.S.C. § 817, a license is
needed from FERC for all hydropower facilities unless there is an existing right-of-way from before the Act was
enacted. FERC generally renews hydroelectric licenses every fifty years. During this renewal project FERC will evaluate
the project “completely anew” and will grant licenses “upon reasonable terms.” The Courts have interpreted
the grant upon reasonable terms broadly. In the City of Tacoma case, FERC required additional
environmental regulations to protect the environment and fish but made the dam economically
unfeasible for the city to comply with the new regulations. The Court ruled that FERC was within
its power to require such environmental regulations. Furthermore, state statutes may also provide
leverage in consideration of the environment during the renewal process. For example, in the western region, The
Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act requires that FERC take into council’s actions into
account at each “relevant stage” for the FERC management process. Under this Act, Federal hydropower
facilities have to give fish and wildlife equal treatment, “ insuring that their operations do not
subordinate fish and wildlife to other process objectives.” This process illustrates three
important opportunities for environmental advocates and decision makers. First, the Federal Power
Act does not give unlimited authority for hydropower renewal, but is limited by licensing terms and environmental
considerations outlined in the act and subsequent amendments. Second, licensing renewal timeframe may be one of
the only moments for environmental advocates to force the decision making process to consider the environment.
Third, states are potentially powerful actors in hydropower dam removal by implement consideration of the
environment through statutes. Global Hydropower Dams: A Call for the U.S. to Lead in Environmental
Protection and Policy Historically hydropower dam development in the United States peaked
around the 1970’s. Now the United States mainly focuses on maintaining the dams in operation.
However in other areas of the world, large dams are being constructed that would destroy vital
ecosystems and the communities in the area. This is a problem, particularly in developing countries, where
the development does not always involve meticulous planning for safety considerations and conservation protections.
Currently “two-thirds of the world’s existing dams are in developing countries.” The U.S. decisions to remove
hydropower dams or discontinue some licensing would send a powerful warning to not repeat
mistakes in overdevelopment of hydropower dams and warn of the negative effects from dams
to ecosystems and communities.

Dam removal massively increases wind and solar production while saving fish –
countries don’t have to rely on hydropower
Opperman 20 --- PhD in ecosystem science from the University of California, Berkeley, WWF’s
Global Lead Scientist for freshwater, B.S. in biology from Duke University (Jeff, 8-5-2020, "Solar
Power Can Help Halt Dramatic Decline Of Migratory Fish," Forbes,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffopperman/2020/08/05/solar-power-can-help-halt-dramatic-
decline-of-migratory-fish/?sh=17b2847948f7///AES

The renewable revolution—the dramatically dropping cost of wind and solar generation and
rapid improvement in technologies for storage and grid management—now makes it possible
for countries to develop power systems that are low cost and low carbon while avoiding
hydropower dams with large negative impacts on communities or natural resources, such as
migratory fish. While several planned dams on the Mekong are still moving forward, it’s not clear that they will be
able to secure financing, even as investment in the region is flowing rapidly toward wind and solar. Installed capacity
of solar PV in Vietnam increased by 40 times from 2018 (134 MW) to 2019 (5,500 MW). Laos has recently proposed a
1,200 MW solar project that would consist of panels floating on a hydropower reservoir. Solar investment is also
rapidly increasing in Cambodia, bolstered by an auction that produced a record low price for electricity in Southeast
Asia at $0.03877/kWh. These trends in solar cost and investment likely contributed to Cambodia’s recent decision to
put a ten-year hold on a hydropower dam on the Mekong at Sambor, a project described as “the worst possible place
[on the Mekong] to build a major dam,” in large part due to it projected massive negative impacts on migratory fish.
Thus, the technological breakthroughs of the renewable revolution may wind up solving the
great challenge of reconciling energy and migratory fish, a challenge that fish passage
technologies have not been able to solve. Delivering on this promise will require that countries
and funders emphasize planning and policies to maximize investments in the technologies that
can relieve the pressure to build hydropower dams with large tradeoffs. For grids that still
require new hydropower, those dams can be placed largely in places that will minimize impacts
on free-flowing rivers, and thus migratory fish, such as upstream of existing dams. In river basins
with mature systems of hydropower, adding or improving fish passage on existing dams can
provide benefits to migratory fish. However, the biggest improvements for fish migration will
likely come through removal of aging dams, such as on the Elwha River (Washington) and the
120-foot tall Vezins Dam on the Sélune River in France. Runs of migratory fish can rebound dramatically
following dam removal, such as river herring exploding from a few thousand to a few million a few years after dam
removal on the Penobscot River (Maine). If last week’s report offered a grimly descending curve for
migratory fish, dam removal can bend it back. And on rivers like the Mekong, the pleasantly
descending curves of cost for solar, wind and storage, can potentially keep both rivers and
migratory fish flowing freely.
CASE
 Adv 1
Scenario 1 – India is building new hydro dams over Pakistani objections – ratcheting up tensions
and sparking nuclear backlash - – it’s codified in Pakistani nuclear doctrine – indopak war kills
everyone and turns every other impact

Scenario 2 – New Turkish hydro dams block water downstream to Iraq and Syria – that
exacerbates instability in the region and make water wars inevitable – ensures wars go nuclear –
there’s a want to go to war just no justification
 Adv 2
Advantage 2- Hydro dams destroying salmon populations now, preventing free movement and
warming water – alts like fish ladders fail – but hydro dam removal produces instant salmon
boosts – salmon are key to ecosystems – they are the basis of food webs – salmon extinction
risks human extinction – makes food wars inevitable – those go nuclear – overwhelming
consensus for the easiest way for conflicts to go nuclear
 T-Protect
W/m – We are gov regulation
W/M - Dams are point-source polluters
Workman, 7 --- adviser and consultant on water and natural resources issues to governmental
and nongovernmental organizations, including the World Commission on Dams (FALL 2007,
JAMES G. WORKMAN, “How to Fix Our Dam Problems; Thousands of aging dams should be
repaired or destroyed, at a cost of billions. A cap-and-trade policy could speed the process and
help pay the bills,” https://issues.org/workman-water-crisis-drought-fix-dams/, JMP)

The third threat to dam performance, as both a cause and a consequence, is climate change.
Dams are point-source polluters. Scientists have long warned that dams alter the chemistry and
biology of rivers. They warm the water and lower its oxygen content , boosting invasive species
and algae blooms while blocking and killing native aquatic life upstream and down. Rivers host
more endangered species than any other ecosystem in the United States, and many of the
nation’s native plants and animals, from charismatic Pacific salmon to lowly Southern freshwater
mussels, face extinction almost entirely because of dams.

Counter-Interp --- Water protection contextually includes actions to safeguard,

maintain or improve water resources
EPA 21 Basic Information about Source Water Protection,
https://www.epa.gov/sourcewaterprotection/basic-information-about-source-water-protection

Source water protection includes a wide variety of actions and activities aimed at safeguarding,
maintaining, or improving the quality and/or quantity of sources of drinking water and their
contributing areas. These activities may depend on the type of source being protected (e.g.,
groundwater, reservoir, or river). Some examples of source water protection are: Riparian zone
restoration to reduce runoff pollution; Stream bank stabilization to reduce sedimentation; Land
protection/easements; Best management practices for agricultural and forestry activities or
stormwater control; Local ordinances to limit certain activities in source water or wellhead
protection areas; Developing emergency response plans; and Educating local industry,
businesses, and citizens on pollution prevention and source water protection.
Dams harm water/salmon/IR = getting rid of them is protection
Our Interp is better – more recent and in the context of the EPA itself- the most
contextual it can get
Incredibly over limiting- only allows for one type of action
Ground: They read a CP they didn’t read ground- we link to states, NGA,
concon, Guidance, citizen suits, etc. those are all cps
Better to get a wider range of topic education rather than a depth on basically 2
affs- they over limit
We are better for limits and fairness because we allow for aff flex and still link
to tons of arguments
Not effects- dams are harmful, we get rid of them- no effect whatsoever
Double bind: Either we link to the EPA DA (because we are feds) or we link to T
protect (because we aren’t) they must choose one
Reasonability over competing interps --- solves race to the bottom and arbitrary
limits
States/Interstate Compacts CP
 P
PDB - Cooperation is best – interstate compacts fail without federal
involvement
Egan ’14 (Connor B. JD, University of Kentucky, "Shaping Interstate Water Compacts To Meet
the Realities of the Twenty-First Century," Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural
Resources Law: Vol. 6: Iss. 2, Article 6. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kjeanrl/vol6/iss2/6)

In Tarrant, the Supreme Court acknowledged Sporhase, which remains good law. 171 Accordingly, interstate water is an
article of commerce that Congress can regulate under their Commerce Clause powers. Therefore, through
Sporhase's holding, in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper Clause, one could reason that Congress has the
authority to establish an administrative body in charge of regulating state compacts dealing
with interstate waters through the Commerce Clause. Congress should create a federal administrative
board with explicit statutory language permitting the Board to regulate water allocation and conservation within interstate
compacts. A fundamental purpose of the Board 's regulatory function should be ensuring that
interstate compacts are capable of adjusting and adapting to the Nation's changing water
landscape. With the Pecos River Compact in mind, these regulations would set water governance standards
to update outmoded or anachronistic compact provisions . A regulatory framework for
interstate water compacts would facilitate future interstate collaboration. This framework
would aid states in creating their own compacts, while also quelling fears of inequity. By establishing
a reliable foundation for interstate water compacts, states involved in conflicts similar to the Tri-State Litigation may be more willing
to agree to interstate water management systems. Drawing from the successful Delaware River Basin Compact, the adjudicatory
component of the agency would be designed to serve as an uninterested third party-similar to the presidential appointee on the
Delaware Compact's committee. 172 While many interstate compacts currently have congressional appointees sitting on their
compact commissions,17 3 such appointments are not mandatory,174 nor do they go far enough. This proposed Board would have
mandatory oversight of all interstate water compacts. The Board should be comprised of one delegate from each state currently in
an interstate water compact. While these delegates would be appointed by their respective states, they would be required to have
expertise in the field of water management and regulation-likely serving on their own state's water management commissions.
During a hearing, interested delegates175 would be required to abstain from partaking in the adjudication. The
organic act,
granting the Board statutory authority, should be written to give it original jurisdiction to hear all
water disputes arising out of interstate compacts. However, the Board would not have any prosecutorial powers.
Honoring the precedent in both the Tarrant and Pecos River Adjudications, states would be encouraged to settle their own disputes.
If resolution seems unlikely, however, the state could request a resolution by the Board. To arrive at a solution, the Board would
hold a hearing with all parties present, to satisfy due process, and then adjudicate the issue in accordance to its regulations and the
existing terms of the compact. Since
the Board would be comprised of experts familiar with water
management and interstate compacts, the resolution would be both equitable and timely-likely
far more so than current compact adjudication. Above all else, the federal administrative board
would be a means to bring interstate water compacts into the twenty-first century. Water scarcity
and its imminent depletion are likely to give rise to a growing number of conflicts in the near future. As water is fundamental to our
Nation's growth and sustenance, timely
resolution of water conflict is imperative . The Board would
facilitate efficient and equitable resolution to such disputes, while continuing to honor our
Nation's emphasis on state sovereignty. VI. CONCLUSION Water is necessary for life and is vital to our Nation's future.
Water has been the root of many conflicts throughout our Nation's history, and its growing scarcity will likely give rise to more.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has relied heavily on interstate compacts to
resolve water disputes among states. While the compact has proved an effective means to allocate and conserve
interstate waters, it is not without flaw. Most importantly, the interstate compact does not provide effective and
efficient means of resolving conflict. With water's vitality comes the need for immediacy . As
highlighted by past conflicts, relying on states to resolve their own water disputes is often a tedious
and lengthy process. Twenty-year attempts to resolve conflicts 176 simply does not comport with the indispensability of
water. In preparation for water's growing scarcity, the United States needs a reliable and productive system
for resolving disputes and facilitating greater interstate collaboration. A federal administrative
board is a means by which the United States can maintain its preference for states to remain the
principal regulators of water management and preserve its historic understanding of water
rights, while also ensuring effective and efficient resolution of future disputes. Furthermore, the
establishment of a regulatory body, along with a concrete foundation for interstate water compacts, will help facilitate future
compacts and make certain our Nation's waters are governed equitably and efficiently through whatever crises lie ahead.
 O
Budget DA – States have an incentive to turn the other way on environmental
issues – If they pay attention to reporting violations, they are on the hook for
money which ensures states must cut money from somewhere else
 S
1. Not all states follow on – if they fiat they do supercharges 50 state fiat
bad arg
2. Can’t solve the aff -
3. All hydropower dams are regulated by the fed- even privately owned
hydroelectric dams have to be licensed by FERC
Graf, 3 --- Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina (NOVEMBER 2003,
William L. Graf, UNIVERSITIES COUNCIL ON WATER RESOURCES, WATER RESOURCES UPDATE,
ISSUE 126, PAGES 54-59, “The Changing Role of Dams in Water Resources Management,”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-Graf-
2/publication/49518263_The_Changing_Role_of_Dams_in_Water_Resources_Management/lin
ks/00b49534fd56fe69bb000000/The-Changing-Role-of-Dams-in-Water-Resources-
Management.pdf, JMP)

For about 2,300 dams in the country, a special local to national set of players take part in the
decision-making process. These dams are privately owned and are licensed for operation by the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), with licenses renewed every 30 to 50 years. The
decisions on license renewal and on revisions to existing licenses are made by FERC which is a
federal agency taking into account national interests, but participants in the decision process
include all levels of government as well as non-governmental organizations. As a result,
decisions on individual dams become entangled in issues ranging from local to national in scale.

This brief review of who is involved in decisions affecting dams shows that many levels of
government, several types of agencies, and a wide range of stakeholders are included. Perhaps
the complexity of dam management issues is illustrated by the length of time required to obtain
a license renewal for a privately owned hydroelectric dam from FERC. Typical cases now require
8 to 10 years, while similar operating licenses of nuclear power stations require only 3 years on
average.

4. Can’t solve ADV 1 – states aren’t modeled and cant engage in foreign
policy
5. Can’t solve ADV 2 – States cant decommission hydropower dams even if
they want to
6. Can’t solve Federal Lands – the counterplan makes administration
impossible.
Attorney General of Oregon 19. In “Attachment A” from Attorneys General of New York,
California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico,
Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Docket ID
No. EPA-HQ-OW-2018-0149 Revised Definition of “Waters of the United States”.
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/comment-letter-final-04-15-19-
final.pdf
EPA and the Corps presume in their analysis of states’ potential reactions to the proposed Waters of
the United States definition and the associated narrowing of Clean Water Act programs that states that choose to
continue to administer more expansive water quality programs will do so based on the state’s definition of “Waters of the State.” In
Oregon, while this is a likely outcome, in addition to the level of resources necessary to implement programs based on
state authorities (as described above), another significant consideration is the implementation of these
authorities on federal lands. As described in the preceding section, headwaters, ephemeral waters, and
wetlands all serve essential functions in the overall watershed health and ecology. In Oregon, over 50% of
land within the state is owned by the federal government and managed by various government agencies.
Most federal land is in the Cascade Mountain Range and Eastern Oregon, which has significant overlap with
waters proposed to be excluded from federal jurisdiction and water quality protections would need to rely in
the future on state administered programs. EPA and the Corps fail to address how programs administered
by states to fill gaps associated with a narrowed Waters of the United States definition would be
implemented by federal agencies on federal lands. Examples include implementation of Load Allocations within
Total Maximum Daily Loads or addressing wetland protections or mitigation arising from a state wetlands protection program. EPA
and the Corps need to provide more information regarding how this change will be implemented
on federal lands.

7. States don’t have the capabilities to enforce

Lyderson 20 (Kari Lyderson has written for Midwest Energy News since January 2011. She is
an author and journalist who worked for the Washington Post's Midwest bureau from 1997
through 2009; 04-27-20; Energy News Network; “As EPA Backs Off Enforcement, States and
Cities Have Little Capacity to Fill the Gap”; https://energynews.us/2020/04/27/as-epa-backs-off-
enforcement-states-and-cities-have-little-capacity-to-fill-gap/)//ZW

State and local governments often have authority but lack the resources and political will to
enforce pollution rules. Update: An EPA spokesperson sought to clarify Monday that it is not suspending all enforcement and that its COVID-19 Enforcement
Policy allows it to waive penalties on a case-by-case basis if the EPA concludes that noncompliance was caused by the pandemic. “We will continue to work with federal, state
and tribal partners to ensure that facilities are meeting regulatory requirements, while taking appropriate steps to protect the health of our staff and the public.” Since the

Trump administration announced the suspension of much environmental enforcement during the coronavirus pandemic,advocates are calling on state
and local regulators, as well as watchdog groups, to step up their efforts to fill the gap. But that
won’t be easy, whether in a Democratic-controlled state like Illinois or a Republican one like Indiana, given the impacts of the pandemic
and past staffing and budget cuts that have curbed the ability of states to carry out
enforcement. In a March 26 letter, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency indicated that polluters won’t be fined for failure to meet federal standards during the
pandemic. Some experts feel the administration is using the pandemic to continue a trend of backing off on enforcement. A report released April 20 by the Environmental Law &
Policy Center shows enforcement of Clean Water Act violations in EPA Region 5 down sharply since 2017, and incidences of noncompliance are up significantly in the region,

The report says that state agencies are ill-equipped to

which covers Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

pick up the slack from the federal government , as environmental enforcement agencies in the
six states have seen reductions of more than 1,100 staff total, and almost $150 million in annual
budget cuts between 2008 and 2018 . The situation is only exacerbated by the Trump administration’s recent decisions to roll back mercury limits,
gut clean car standards and reject stricter standards recommended by federal researchers for particulate matter (soot). Those decisions, which the administration justified in
part by the coronavirus’s economic impact, enshrine policies that will outlast the pandemic. “Capital is just seizing this moment because your local watchdogs are sheltering in
place and the federal EPA has given a gift to polluters exactly when local groups are confined at home,” said Rachel Havrelock, an associate English professor at the University of

powers State agencies are in most

Illinois-Chicago who specializes in using the humanities to engage the public on environmental issues. State

cases deputized to carry out enforcement of federal environmental laws including the Clean
Water Act and Clean Air Act, so in theory they have already been and can continue doing the
enforcement work that the EPA is suspending . But state agencies are often hamstrung by a lack
of staff and resources or political will, and the idea that the federal government would make sure
the laws were being enforced was an important “backstop,” in the words of Al Armendariz, a regional deputy director for the
Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, and former EPA administrator for Region 6, based in Texas. “This is really an awful time” for the EPA to back off, Armendariz said. “They’re
just opening the door for folks who are careless or reckless, increasing the amount of pollution they are putting in the air, which could harm residents who are also dealing with
the risks from coronavirus. Right now we need the strongest environmental protections to keep the public safe.” Armendariz and others note that Trump’s rolling back of
particulate matter standards is especially troubling given a recent Harvard School of Public Health study showing that people living in areas with higher particulate pollution are
dying at higher rates from coronavirus. While regulators are facing real constraints and risks in their work, environmental advocates emphasize that much enforcement can

. “Most
happen remotely, including following up on past violations and monitoring the emissions and operations data companies are required to submit to regulators

coal plants have electronic monitoring systems measuring pollution from stacks,” Armendariz
said. “Those kinds of reports are submitted from facilities to states, often electronically. Those
are the kinds of things regulators can review and take enforcement action on if appropriate,
without ever physically visiting the facility.” Concern in Indiana Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb’s executive order in response to the pandemic
allows the state to “waive, suspend, or modify any existing rule” in light of the pandemic, and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management announced that it will use
discretion in enforcement, including with deadline extensions and considering cases where facilities cannot comply with regulations because of the pandemic. The agency on its

advocates
website says it has “not relaxed any policies nor has the agency issued any broad based waivers from meeting stringent regulatory requirements.” But

fear the pandemic could mean polluters are not held accountable. “It’s already a lax environment,” said Lindsay Haake,
program director for the Citizens Action Coalition in Indiana. “Enforcement should never be viewed as a nonessential duty.” Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier
Environmental Council, said he believes the environmental management department is earnest about continuing to do inspections and enforce regulations, but he worries that
staffing constraints during the pandemic could prevent adequate enforcement. He said the group is also concerned that in its pandemic response announcement, the
department “uses ‘encourage’ instead of ‘require’” in passages such as this one: “All regulated entities are encouraged to take all available actions necessary to ensure
continued compliance with environmental regulations and permit requirements to protect the health and safety of Hoosiers and the environment.” “While we have assurances
from IDEM that they construe the desired actions as ‘requirements,’ we are concerned that the ‘encouragement’ language will cause some regulated entities to not necessarily
take ‘all available actions,’” Kharbanda said. “If IDEM doesn’t set clear expectations, then some regulated entities may choose not to be so forthcoming about where they are
falling short in environmental compliance.” Kharbanda is concerned that during the pandemic, among other things, department staff may not fully enforce Indiana’s standards
for outdoor wood boilers that about 8,000 households use to heat their homes. The boilers “can truly harm the respiratory health of people, and it’s precisely the type of
pollution that we need to avoid in the midst of a virus that targets one’s respiratory system,” he said. Northwest Indiana, home to multiple steel mills, power plants, an oil
refinery and other heavy industry, is among the places where low-income residents already especially vulnerable to coronavirus and other ailments could suffer real-life
consequences from increased pollution. In 2012, the BP oil refinery in Northwest Indiana was forced to invest $400 million in pollution controls and pay an $8 million fine
because of Clean Air Act violations. If such violations happened today, there might be fewer consequences, advocates fear. Holcomb and former governors Mike Pence and
Mitch Daniels (all Republicans) were known as opponents of strict government regulation, with Pence refusing to comply with the Obama-era Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon
emissions. Haake said that the state has already long suffered from under-staffing at agencies like the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Utility
Regulatory Commission. Nonetheless, she said she has “incredible faith” in environmental department staff to hold polluters accountable, if they are given more resources and
power to do their jobs. As on the federal level, she worries cuts to state enforcement capabilities will remain once the pandemic recedes. She noted the slowing economy “will
come with short-lived environmental benefits,” especially in an industry-heavy state like Indiana. “But once that production and commerce begins to ramp up again, we’ll see

Department of Environmental
Hoosiers suffer the impact of already lax enforcement and oversight,” made worse by changes during the pandemic.

Management spokesperson Sarah Bonick downplayed concerns, noting that the department
“will generally not offer advance approval of noncompliance.” “We still expect regulated entities
to do everything they can to be in compliance,” she said. “However, we recognize that there are
specific situations that may require flexibility on our part, and we will exercise discretion when
necessary while continuing to protect public health and the environment.” Signs of hope in Illinois Illinois
regulatory agencies like the Department of Natural Resources and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency have suffered deep cuts over the years, particularly under previous

The Illinois EPA saw its staff reduced by 38%

Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, as the state has struggled with a long-standing budget crisis.

and funding decreased by 25% under Rauner, and state air pollution inspections dropped 81% in
the last decade, including under Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, according to the Chicago Tribune. Since Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a
Democrat, took office last year, advocates have been hopeful about increased focus on a clean environment, though they hope the pandemic doesn’t sideline progress. Illinois
EPA spokesperson Kim Biggs said that in 2019, the agency posted 192 jobs and filled 123 them, and also hired 56 people so far in 2020. “We will continue to work through the
process of building our headcount in what will be a financially challenging budget cycle for states across the country,” she said, noting that the agency will continue enforcement
while taking safety into consideration during the pandemic. “Since the time Gov. Pritzker took office, the IEPA has made a renewed emphasis on both hiring and enforcement,”
she said. “In the first year of Gov. Pritzker’s administration the IEPA issued the most violation notices since 2011 and issued the most referrals since 2015.” The Illinois
Department of Resources, which issues permits and does inspections related to coal mining, oil and gas, and other sectors, will continue inspections, permitting and
enforcement though most staff are working remotely, according to spokesperson Rachel Torbert. “The Office of Oil and Gas Resource Management has automatically extended
the time allowed permittees to abate issues noted in notices of noncompliance,” she added. Havrelock, of the University of Illinois-Chicago, authored an op-ed calling for states
and localities to pass stricter regulations in light of the federal rollback, and also urged the state to tap the expertise of community organizations and universities. “At this time
any of us are ready to give to our communities and the state,” Havrelock said. “So call up the academics. This is the moment to turn to Kim Wasserman, Juliana Pino” —
prominent Chicago environmental justice leaders. “Bring them in to the [state] office of the environment. It may be totally unprecedented to do that, but look where we are.”
Clean energy advocates in Illinois are still hopeful that Pritzker will be able to fulfill a promise made in his January State of the State address, to sign an energy bill this year that
will accelerate clean energy development. Even if coal plants are facing less enforcement from the federal government, advocates reason, they are likely to scale back their
operations or close as wind and solar become more and more competitive. While Illinois’s proposed Clean Energy Jobs Act doesn’t include limits on sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxide, particulate or other emissions related to public health, the legislation’s mandate to phase out and ultimately end carbon emissions from power plants would inherently
also stop other emissions. Environmental Defense Fund regulatory attorney Christie Hicks said advocates see passage of the Clean Energy Jobs Act “as more important now than
ever given some of these rollbacks and of course the economic stimulus that a lot of the programs [created by the proposal] would provide.” Local leadership Some cities have
the authority to enforce federal environmental laws, usually through agreements with their state environmental protection agencies. And local governments have significant
power to curb pollution through public nuisance, land use and other municipal or county ordinances. Advocates say that given the federal rollbacks and state constraints, local
 many major cities have poor track records, and few extra
authorities need to become more vigilant and proactive. But

resources to increase their enforcement. In Chicago, an audit released last fall showed the city
department of public health’s abysmal failure to monitor air quality, inspect polluting facilities or
issue violations, as it is authorized to do under an agreement with the Illinois EPA. The
disastrous demolition of a defunct Chicago coal plant on April 11, sending clouds of dust over a
neighborhood, showcased both the failure of local officials in protecting citizens, and the powers
that local governments have in such situations . After the debacle, Mayor Lori Lightfoot lodged $68,000 in fines against the company
demolishing the plant, stopped work and launched an investigation. Local leaders, including Kim Wasserman, called for her to go much farther by revoking the company’s
permits, repealing a $20 million tax break to the company and giving residents more power over development and demolition decisions. The city could have prevented the
debacle in the first place if they had more closely inspected the company’s plans and listened to residents’ pleas not to move forward with such seemingly nonessential work
during the pandemic, leaders note. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. “There’s a lot of anger at the fact this was done during a pandemic, and all
these systems that have been set up are not working,” said Edith Tovar, an organizer with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in the neighborhood where the
plant was demolished. Armendariz explained that the U.S. EPA would typically have little role in preventing or even punishing violators for such one-time situations,

. Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law &

underscoring the important role of local governments

Policy Center, has likewise called on the city and state to better fulfill their mandates, especially
given the pandemic and federal rollbacks. But he emphasized that there’s no substitute for
strong federal leadership and action. “States need to step up when the federal government is
stepping back from its regulatory and enforcement responsibilities, but the cities and states
stepping up is no substitute for the federal U.S. EPA,” Learner said. “There’s no way the states can
replace what a well-funded and well-operating U.S. EPA can and should do when it comes to
implementing and enforcing the core environmental laws and regulatory standards. The Trump
administration is moving once again in entirely the wrong direction when it comes to protecting public health and our environment. It’s especially all the more disturbing given
the COVID-19 pandemic.”

8. States are too slow on water policy and even a few states that don’t act
will harm water in other states – Iowa proves
Beeman 7/1– Senior reporter @ Iowa Capital Dispatch, recipient of awards for environmental
and business writing (Perry Beeman, “Environmental group: Iowa’s waterway cleanup plan could
take 22,000 years”, Iowa Capital Dispatch, July 1, 2021,
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2021/07/01/environmental-group-iowas-waterway-cleanup-
plan-could-take-22000-years/ //IB

Iowa’s work to clean polluted waterways is so slow it will take as much as 22,000 years to
meet some of the goals in the state’s voluntary plan, the Iowa Environmental Council reported.
The nonprofit’s latest review of the state’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy — the backbone of
Iowa’s water quality efforts — found the plan still isn’t working, in the council’s view. State
leaders, including the agriculture secretary, insist the program is making progress. The strategy,
adopted in 2013, requires action by sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities. However,
state regulators and lawmakers have steadfastly declined to regulate the fertilizer runoff
coming from corn and soybean fields that dominate the Iowa landscape. Instead, they have
supported programs that pay farmers to take actions to reduce pollution. One contaminant,
nitrate, has been suspected of causing cancer. Levels were so high decades ago that 500,000-
customer Des Moines Water Works had to install special equipment that is expensive to run,
utility officials have said. Nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers feed algae blooms in lakes
and in the Gulf of Mexico. Some scientists suspect they worsen the algae toxins that Des Moines
Water Works declared made the Des Moines River “essentially unusable” for drinking water at
times. Council summarizes problems The council summarized the problems in its latest report,
and issued policy recommendations. “The short version is the Nutrient Reduction Strategy is not
succeeding in reducing the nutrient pollution problem in Iowa,” Ingrid Gronstal, the council’s
water program director, said in a interview. One indicator of water quality trouble mentioned in
the council report: University of Iowa data showing the amount of nitrogen running
downstream from Iowa had doubled since 2003. That despite efforts by state lawmakers and
federal and state environmental and agricultural agencies to encourage conservation on farms
and other efforts to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. Biologists call elements such as
nitrogen and phosphorus “nutrients” because they feed crops and other plants. They are
commonly found in farm fertilizers that have been traced to many of Iowa’s water quality issues.
Farm groups such as the Iowa Water Agriculture Alliance, based at the Iowa Soybean Association
in Ankeny, have acknowledged over the years that progress on the strategy needs to pick up.
They have called for more cost share help for farmers. The alliance’s website calls the Nutrient
Reduction Strategy “a science-based plan that will take decades to accomplish. Experience and
research has shown that it can take more than one in-field or edge-of-field practice to reach
nutrient reduction goals.” Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig has said repeatedly that the state is
starting to see more farmers use cover crops and other techniques. When American Rivers in
April called the strategy into question and listed the Raccoon River as one of the nation’s “most
endangered,” Naig called it “propaganda.” “We are moving in the right direction,” Naig said. In
January, Naig announced a partnership with the Iowa Soybean Association and Quantified
Ventures to encourage more farmers to participate in conservation projects. “Using this
innovative approach to incentivize producers to implement science-based conservation
practices that fit their farms, we can scale up the number of conservation practices faster and
make more progress towards the goals outlined in the Nutrient Reduction Strategy,” Naig said in
a statement. ‘Bureaucratic slowness’ The environmental council detailed what it sees as an
extremely slow response to serious water quality issues. “The history of addressing upper
Midwest nutrient pollution is a story of bureaucratic slowness and failure to take difficult but
meaningful action to address excessive pollution,” according to the report. A federal task
force’s 2008 action plan called for a 45% reduction of the low-oxygen “dead zone” off
Louisiana’s cost by 2035 and asked states to develop their own nutrient reduction strategies.
But Iowa isn’t spending the money necessary to get there, and it doesn’t have regulations to
push the issue, the council reported. Iowa lawmakers last session extended a program that will
provide $282 million over the next 12 years. The latest state review of the Nutrient Reduction
Strategy said $560 million in U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service funds were spent in
Iowa in 2018-19. But the council said only $24 million of that was directed specifically at water
quality projects. The Nutrient Reduction Strategy was projected to cost up to $1.2 billion a year,
in 2013 dollars. “The state must adopt a renewed sense of urgency to address water quality and
take bold action to implement policy change. Without action, the situation will continue to
worsen,” the council wrote. The council noted that the rate of cover crop planting in Iowa has
not accelerated since the Nutrient Reduction Strategy was adopted in 2013. The national
Environmental Working Group this week reported that satellite images show Iowa’s growth in
the use of cover crops has slowed. Cover crops such as barley, wheat and oats help hold the soil
in place and can soak up pollutants, in addition to sweeping at least a small amount of carbon
from the atmosphere. The council reported that Iowa in 2018 had 973,000 acres of cover crops,
far short of the state’s goal of 12.6 million acres. “At the current pace, it will take 85 years to
meet the goal for cover crops,” the council’s latest report noted. It would take 942 years to
reach the goal for creating wetlands. The state in 2018 had 107,000 acres “treated” by
wetlands that can save soil and absorb pollutants. The goal was 7.7 million acres. At the current
pace, it would take even longer — 22,325 years — to build all the bioreactors called for by the
Nutrient Reduction Strategy, the council wrote. Bioreactors are engineered underground pits
with wood chips that help naturally strip pollutants from water. The NRS called for 6 million
acres to be “treated” by bioreactors. In 2018, that number stood at 2,000 acres, the council
reported. ‘Not a strategy’ The council said the NRS isn’t a strategy at all. “Calling the NRS a
strategy is a misnomer. The portion of the NRS addressing nonpoint source (agricultural)
pollution contains a list of conservation practices that have the potential to reduce nutrient
pollution. However, the document does not include a strategy for implementation,
benchmarks or timelines, or performance measures,” the council wrote. “There is no
articulation of consequences for failing to meet the 45 percent reduction goal by 2035, nor is
there any interim goal or trigger to re-evaluate the strategy and modify the policy if progress is
not being made. In short, most of the elements one would expect from a strategy are not
present. “More broadly, the state of Iowa is far too lenient in its approach to (animal
confinement, or CAFO) regulation and has become a safe haven for industrial livestock
operations,” the report states. “CAFOs are allowed to be sited near each other in high
concentrations, producing more manure than the surrounding landscape can possibly handle.”
The council proposed several policy recommendations in response to the state’s lack of progress on reducing farm-related pollution.
— Balance public health and other public interests with private land rights. “Based on data available from the last few decades, the
state has largely abdicated its duty to protect Iowa’s waterways for the common good. Instead, dangerously poor water quality has
become an externality of agricultural production that Iowans must now tolerate, pay millions of dollars each year to mitigate, and
suffer untold adverse health outcomes as a result.” — Set numeric standards for nitrogen and phosphorus, the main ag pollutants.
— Expand the current state law that requires individual Iowans to protect groundwater so that the regulations require protection of
rivers and lakes, too. Nearly half of Iowans are getting their drinking water from rivers and lakes. — Assure that manure is not
overapplied to farm fields.

9. States have ceded tons of authority over dams to the fed and special
water districts – causes preemption and drastically narrows the scope of
solvency.
David H. Getches, 2001, [Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law, University of
Colorado School of Law, "The Metamorphosis Of Western Water Policy: Have Federal Laws And
Local Decisions Eclipsed The States' Role?", Stanford Environmental Law Journal – Accessed via
Nexis Uni through UMich //DMcD]
B. The Rise and Fall of Big Dams

In the arid West, where rainfall is infrequent and distances between streams are great, dams and canals were needed to
store and transport water to meet the demands of rising population. Because they often "appropriated" water far in excess
of average annual flows, water users had rights to water that, without storage, were only actually available in extraordinarily wet
years. In the old West, development and distribution of water by building dams and ditches were initially tasks for an appropriator
acting independently. But water users generally lacked sufficient capital to build elaborate facilities as well as the cooperation that
was needed to make collective use of resources. Even when private irrigation enterprises were formed to serve an area, they often
failed for lack of capital and because there was no legal means to force potential beneficiaries to participate in sharing the cost.
California enacted a law permitting the formation of irrigation districts empowered to impose
compulsory taxes on landowners. Yet failures continued because of economic inefficiencies and
lack of [*11] expertise. States tried several other approaches, but entities for collective irrigation in the arid
West, other than in early Spanish, Indian, and Mormon communities, generally did not succeed. The United States
Congress established the federal reclamation program in 1902 to provide federal assistance for
water development projects and thereby promote the settlement of the West. Originally, the United States attempted to
collect repayment of its costs of constructing project facilities from the individual irrigators who used them. Eventually, Congress
altered this approach and recognized special water districts as the exclusive entities with which it would deal
when authorizing and building water projects. These districts typically contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation to operate the
projects and to repay the government's costs with revenues collected from users and property owners in the district. The districts
were endowed with powers normally reserved for governments, such as the prerogative to tax land. State law created these
special water districts to handle water development, supply, and management at a regional or local level. Today,
some districts perform functions well beyond the provision of irrigation water . Their quasi-
governmental status and independence from state control has caused considerable controversy ,
but states have done little to curb their autonomy . For most of the twentieth century, the United States Bureau of
Reclamation was the largest single provider of capital in the form of subsidized loans and grants for major water development
throughout the West. Major decisions about size and design of facilities were left to experts, usually engineers. The day-to-day tasks
of managing and distributing water were conducted by special districts according to federal regulations and contracts. The federal
government's entry into water development tended to eclipse the importance of state water law.
Competition for [*12] large, federally-funded water facilities was keen and decisions about the timing and siting of dams became
politically charged. This provided an incentive
to do whatever was necessary to participate in federal dam-
building programs, including subordination of state water rights and conforming state policies
to comply with federal goals. The primary water policy objective of western politicians for most of the
twentieth century was aimed at capturing federal assistance for water projects . Development of public works is
an attractive arena for politicians because they can deliver tangible results ostensibly for the benefit of their constituents. Although
political rhetoric claimed state authority over water resources, states and their leaders appeared willing
to sacrifice legal
and institutional control in exchange for construction of facilities that enabled physical control of water. The
states passed enabling legislation for the districts to be organized so they could operate the
federal projects, but the districts were locally-controlled , enjoyed considerable autonomy under state laws, and
typically took control of all water rights in areas to be served by a project. Besides requiring subordination of the
state-granted water rights of individual landowners to be served by federal projects, authorizations occasionally
superseded state water law. These measures were necessary to centralize control over sufficient water sources to justify
the project. Historically, it is fair to say that most state water planning was initiated in response to federal
programs and the inducement of federal largesse. Many "plans" were used simply to identify and expedite federal water
development projects. Because planning was supply-oriented, it focused on where to build and how to use large reclamation
projects with little regard for environmental, social, or economic costs. Only a few states adopted comprehensive approaches to
planning that did more than justify federal projects. A 1965 federal law attempted to promote better, more integrated [*13]
planning at the river basin level. States resisted, although many complied insofar as necessary to secure federal support for water
projects. As hopes for federal funding waned with a change in federal policy in the 1980s, motivation for state water planning
diminished. In 1981, the federal effort to promote a more comprehensive approach at the river basin level was abandoned. By the
time the federal government demanded a fuller consideration of economic feasibility and environmental impacts as part of the
justification for federal water projects, funding had seriously declined. Not until the 1970s did a federal law, the National
Environmental Policy Act, require federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement before undertaking a major
federal action. In 1983, the government adopted principles and guidelines that gave significant weight to balancing costs and
benefits and to environmental consequences, but by then most of the big federal projects were already completed or underway. In
retrospect, the
federal dam-building era resulted in states abdicating much control over water
within their boundaries to the federal government. Instead of truly comprehensive planning that considered the
panoply of uses and values inherent in water, states often did the minimum "planning" necessary to get federal subsidies. For many
years federal law required no more, and therefore most federal projects were constructed without concern for their environmental
consequences. Purely natural values, without utilitarian focus, were generally neglected. If fish and wildlife, recreation, and flood
control were considered at all in planning a federal project, these uses were included as project purposes purely incidental to
agricultural, municipal, and industrial purposes.
States can’t regulate federal dams --- recent lawsuit gives them authority
Leins 19, staff @ US News (Casey, “Washington State Expected to Regulate Federal Dams,” US
News, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2019-02-19/washington-state-
expected-to-regulate-federal-dams-that-are-harming-its-rivers)//BB – tagged by JMP

The dams are a major contributor to the rivers' high temperatures, which are killing the region's
salmon populations. The dam operators have not had to follow state standards since they were
built. Now, their operators might have to follow state guidelines for the first time, thanks to a lawsuit filed by
an environmental group. The nine federal dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers within the state of

Washington were built before the Clean Water Act , which governs water pollution in the U.S. Until now, the
federal dam operators have not been required to follow the law's standards and also haven't been required to adhere
to the state's standards, which include pollution discharge limits and a temperature limit of 68
degrees in the Columbia River. But Washington state might finally have its chance to regulate the federal

dams, thanks to lawsuits filed by Columbia Riverkeeper , an organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the
Columbia River. The organization reached a settlement in 2014 with the Army Corps of Engineers and

the Bureau of Reclamation – which operate the dams – to reduce the dams' toxic oil pollution discharge. The federal
hydropower dam operators must now apply for discharge elimination permits from the Environmental Protection

Agency for each federal dam. This is where Washington state enters the picture: The EPA must
consult Washington's Department of Ecology to make sure its permits meet state standards .

No internal link – even contentious federal state relationship doesn’t preclude

cooperation on other issues
Goelzhauser, University of Utah, and Konisky, Indiana University, 2021

[Greg and David, “The State of American Federalism 2019–2020: Polarized and Punitive
Intergovernmental Relations”Publius:The Journal of Federalism volume 50 number 3, pp. 311-
343doi:10.1093/publius/pjaa021 google scholar 6/8/21 GDI- TM] The rancor characterizing
federal-state relations has been remarkable. Responding to criticisms, Trump tweeted, “Some
[states] have insatiable appetites [and] are never satisfied (politics?),” adding that “complain[ing
governors] should have been stocked up and ready” (Jackson 2020). On Governor Whitmer he
said, “We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor,” adding “she doesn’t have a
clue” (Karni 2020). After Trump said “governors .. . shouldn’t be blaming the Federal
Government for their own shortcomings,” Governor Pritzker responded, “You ... should be
leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat. Where were the
tests when we needed them? Get off Twitter and do your job” (Smith 2020). Governor Inslee
said the federal response “would be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the
science and told the truth,” to which the president replied that Inslee was “a snake” and “not a
good governor” (Choi 2020). At the same time, vertical relations have been cooperative in some
respects. Congress allocated funds to states for general pandemic response, child care,
education, food security, law enforcement, mental health services, and unemploy- ment
insurance. The federal government has also been cooperative with respect to certain policy
implementation issues. As Magdalena Krajewska details in this Annual Review, for example, the
federal government extended the deadline for states to issue new identification for air travel in
compliance with the REAL ID Act. Furthermore, one relief bill provided for an increase in the
Federal Medical Assistance Percentage to states, though some officials objected to its lack of
applicability to people who received Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act’s program
expansion (e.g., Young 2020).
 T
50 State uniform fiat is a voter:
- Distorts topic lit – aff should get lack of uniformity/implementation args - Fed
key warrants are fringes of lit makes soft left affs unwinnable – single state CP’s
solve fedism offense
--no solvency advocate for 50 state uniformity – kills topic education
- reject the team
 ECON
Case turns and OWs on magnitude and timeframe-
- Magnitude: Food wars and Turkey/India conflicts go nuclear; that ensures that no one
lives because nukes destroy the ozone layer and make crops impossible to farm while
making salmon extinct. Covid proves no impact to econ decline.
- Timeframe: Tensions are high- conflict is coming soon. Wars escalate quickly.
Hydropower also blocks fish migration killing them quickly. Covid also proves no quick
impact to econ decline- even if they’re right, we haven’t seen the impact yet.

1. Consumer Confidence low now – delta and inflation

Graeme Wearden 21, 8-1-2021, "US consumer confidence hits six-month low, eurozone inflation
at decade high – as it happened," Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2021/aug/31/china-economy-slows-factories-
services-uk-mortgages-supply-chain-ftse-sterling-oil-business-live///OK

US consumer confidence has dropped to a six month low , as rising inflation and Covid-19 cases both hit morale. The
Conference Board’s gauge of consumer morale fell to 113.8 points in August, the lowest since Februar y , and

sharply down on July’s 125 points. Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board, said the pandemic
was hitting confidence: “ Concerns about the Delta variant —and, to a lesser degree, rising gas and food

prices —resulted in a less favorable view of current economic conditions and short-term growth
prospects. US house prices continued their astonishing run, up by a record-breaking over 18% over the last year. In the eurozone, has inflation hit
a decade high. Consumer prices rose by 3% year-on-year in August, well over the European Central Bank’s 2% target. Economists predicted the ECB
would not be swayed from continuing its pandemic stimulus programme, although the jump in prices - led by energy and industrial goods - could cause
some anxiety. Chiara Zangarelli, European economist at Nomura, says: Following today’s upside inflation surprise, we are revising up our inflation
outlook for the euro area slightly. We now see inflation peaking at 3.5% y-o-y at the end of 2021 and we expect euro area 2022
inflation to rise to 1.6% y-o-y, up from our previous forecast of 1.5%. Today’s stronger inflation prints will likely add to

some market concerns that the rise in euro area inflation could be more protracted than the ECB currently envisages. However, we think
the ECB will continue to dismiss the rise in inflation this year as transitory at the September meeting. While headline inflation is rising well above 2%,
measures of underlying inflation remain still subdued in the euro area . In the UK, consumer credit failed to grow in July for the first time since February
- suggesting a slowdown in the UK’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis. Homeowners also made an unusual repayment on their mortgage debts, after
a surge in borrowing in June in the rush to benefit from the stamp duty holiday. UK homeowners repay £1.4bn more mortgage debt in July than they
borrow Read more China’s recovery stumbled, with factory growth almost flatlining and its service sector falling into contraction. Economists blamed
the recent restrictions imposed to fight the pandemic, and an easing of demand in other economies.

2. COVID thumps or proves resiliency.

Siegel et al 21 – Rachel Siegel, Andrew Van Dam and Erica Werner, reporters at the
Washington Post, January 28th ("2020 was the worst year for economic growth since World War
II", Available online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/28/gdp-2020-
economy-recession/, Accessed 4-6-2021)

The U.S. economy shrank by 3.5 percent in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged factories,
businesses and households, pushing U.S. economic growth to a low not seen since the United
States wound down wartime spending in 1946. Overall, the economy was surprisingly resilient
in the second half of the year, given the falloff at the start of the public health crisis, according
to data released Thursday from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Yet, the 1 percent growth in
the fourth quarter signaled a faltering recovery and a long road ahead, with 9.8 million jobs still
missing and 23.8 million adults struggling to feed their families. “2020 has no precedent in
modern economic history,” said David Wilcox, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics and a former director of the domestic economics division at the Federal
Reserve. “The influenza of 1918 and 1919 predates our modern system of economic statistics,
and since World War II, there’s never been a contraction that even remotely approached the
severity and the breadth of the initial collapse in 2020. ” It’s the first time the economy has
contracted for the year since 2009, when gross domestic product shrank by 2.5 percent during
the depths of the Great Recession. The next-worst plunge was 1946, when the economy shrank
by 11.6 percent as the nation demobilized from its wartime footing.
 EPA TRADE OFF
Case turns and OWs on timeframe and magnitude-
- Timeframe: Nuclear war and salmon extinction happen quicker; hydropower dams
ensure that tensions spillover and food webs are crushed
- Magnitude: Science and technological advances ensure that [impact] is never coming,
but hydro dams risk geopolitical tensions and lead to extinction

1. Our actor is FERC- not the EPA

2. Resources drained now, and that’s true over decades
EPA 5-13, (5-13-2021,"Resource Constraints, Leadership Decisions, and Workforce Culture Led
to a Decline in Federal Enforcement", Office of Inspector General, EPA,
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-05/documents/_epaoig_20210513-21-p-
0132_0.pdf ) //BW

The decline in enforcement resources was a primary driver behind the observed declining
enforcement trends, resulting in fewer compliance monitoring activities and concluded
enforcement actions. EPA leadership also made strategic decisions that affected enforcement
trends, such as focusing limited resources on the most serious cases and, in 2017, emphasizing
deference to state enforcement programs and compliance assistance. From 2006 through 2018,
growth in the domestic economy and new laws increased the size and level of activity in key
sectors that the EPA regulated, but the EPA’s capacity to meet that need decreased.

3. Even with limited resources, water is at the highest priority level

EPA 5-13, (5-13-2021,"Resource Constraints, Leadership Decisions, and Workforce Culture Led
to a Decline in Federal Enforcement", Office of Inspector General, EPA,
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-05/documents/_epaoig_20210513-21-p-
0132_0.pdf ) //BW

Every two to four years, the EPA sets national enforcement priorities to focus civil and criminal
enforcement resources and expertise on serious environmental problems .8 After setting these
national priorities, the EPA’s OECA and the EPA regions discuss region-specific enforcement
commitments to support the goals and measures of those priorities. Depending on the level of
progress, the EPA may either carry over a national priority to the next cycle or consider the issue
sufficiently addressed and return the issue to the “core” enforcement program. The EPA’s
national enforcement priorities have previously focused on addressing substantial pollution
problems, such as those occurring in the mineral-processing or petroleum-refining industries, or
particular types of pollutants, such as air toxics or stormwater pollutants (Figure 2). The
Agency’s national priorities for FYs 2020 through 2023 focus on areas of noncompliance within
the air, hazardous chemicals, clean water, and safe drinking water programs .
 4. EPA can handle multiple issues at once
Lee 21 (Stephen, “EPA Chief Focuses on Climate Goals and Hiring 700 Scientists,” Bloomberg
Tax, https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/epa-chief-focuses-on-climate-goals-and-
hiring-700-scientists?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=DTNW&utm_campaign=00000178-ab91-
d81e-ad7f-fbfd41c90004)//BB

**Michael Regan is the administrator of the US EPA

In his last job as North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, Regan was known for navigating
complicated issues by forging consensus—something that may be more difficult given the
extreme polarization of today’s Washington. Should Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar American Jobs
Plan make it through Congress, Regan will play a key role in implementing its climate provisions .
Should the bill either die or be stripped of its climate provisions along the way, he’ll have to
shoulder even more of the burden of Biden’s climate agenda. Bloomberg Green talked to Regan
about his vision for the EPA, his plans for reining in emissions, and how he aims to make
environmental justice a guidepost for decision-making. The interview has been edited and
condensed for clarity. How aggressive should the U.S. be in formulating a new commitment
under the Paris Agreement now that it’s rejoined? What considerations—jobs, the economic
recovery—are being factored into that? Listen, given the urgency of this climate crisis, the
president is full steam ahead on not only the U.S. stepping up and playing a leadership role, but
working to be sure that the international community understands that we’re all in this together.
EPA has a critical role to play in delivering on President Biden’s aggressive climate agenda. It’s an
all-hands-on-deck approach. We’re focused on the car standards. The president has directed
EPA to issue a new notice of proposed rule-making by the end of July, and we’re on track to
meet that timeline. We’re laser-focused on methane regulations. We’re looking at the California
waiver [allowing the state to set its own vehicle-emission standards] , and I’ve made it clear that
I’m a firm believer in the state’s statutory authority to lead. We are heavily engaged with the
business community. We are heavily engaged with the labor community. I believe that it’s a
false option to choose between economic development and prosperity and environmental
protection. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

5. That’s true because the pesticide ban didn’t lead to the impact- they
could multitask on this and WOTUS
Coral Davenport 21, 8-18-2021, "E.P.A. to Block Pesticide Tied to Neurological Harm in
Children," No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/climate/pesticides-epa-
chlorpyrifos.html///OK

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is banning a common pesticide ,
widely used since 1965 on fruits and vegetables, from use on food crops because it has been linked to neurological damage in children. The
Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] said this week it
would publish a regulation to block the use of
chlorpyrifos on food. One of the most widely used pesticides, chlorpyrifos is commonly applied to corn, soybeans, apples, broccoli,
asparagus and other produce. The new rule, which will take effect in six months, follows an order in April by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that
directed the E.P.A. to halt the agricultural use of the chemical unless it could demonstrate its safety. Labor and environmental advocacy groups
estimate that the decision will eliminate more than 90 percent of chlorpyrifos use in the countr y. In an
unusual move, the new chlorpyrifos policy will not be put in place via the standard regulatory process, under which the E.P.A. first publishes a draft
rule, then takes public comment before publishing a final rule. Rather, in compliance with the court order, which noted that the science linking
chlorpyrifos to brain damage is over a decade old, the rule will be published in final form, without a draft or public comment period. Climate Fwd
There’s an ongoing crisis — and tons of news. Our newsletter keeps you up to date. Get it sent to your inbox. The announcement is the latest in a series
of moves by the Biden administration to re-create, strengthen or reinstate more than 100 environmental regulations. “ Today E.P.A. is
taking an overdue step to protect public health ,” the agency’s head, Michael S. Regan, said. “Ending the use of chlorpyrifos
on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide.”

6. Framing it as zero sum is bad – leads to worse environmental

degradation.
Takacs et al. 17 – UC Hastings College of the Law. Other Contributors: Shalanda Baker, Robin
Kundis Craig, John Dernbach, Keith Hirokawa, Sarah Krakoff, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers,
Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J.B. Ruhl, Jim Salzman, Inara Scott. (David; Published:
2017; “Beyond Zero-sum Environmentalism”; UC Hastings Scholarship Repository; Accessed: July
16, 2021; https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=2562&context=faculty_scholarship)//CYang

In the summer of 2016, a small but hardy group of law professors gathered to discuss the concept of zero-sum
environmentalism. We had set for our agenda to get “beyond” zero-sum environmentalism. The suggestion was that there
is a dominant approach to environmental law issues that frames them as zero-sum and that this
framing can be damaging to environmental progress. What we grappled with, though, is whether
environmental problems really are (at least at times) zero-sum. Is the description of an environmental issue as zero-sum ever
accurate? Are laws treating issues as zero-sum when they should not be doing so? Or maybe ignoring a zero-sum framework that is
at play? Perhaps there
are no zero-sum dynamics in the real world and instead “zero-sum” is just the
language we (or some of us) use to describe environmental trade offs.

Zero-sum as used in the context of environmental policy implies stark winners and losers. If the
environment wins, the economy must lose. To protect the owls, we destroy the lives of the loggers. To prevent global climate
change, Americans must completely change life as they know it. Indeed, the concept, if not language, of zero-sum appears
particularly prevalent in the new Donald Trump Administration, where actions in favor of environmental protection are couched as
actions against the economy.

Our discussions revealed (unsurprisingly) that we all came to this question with different examples, assumptions, and solutions.
Some people rejectedthe idea that zero-sum problems ever actually exist, and suggested that reliance
on the framework and use of the term can be damaging to environmental governance – not just
because it is an overly constrained view of how trade offs actually work, but also because the
language of zero-sum necessarily creates a combative stance that can impede collaboration and
creative thinking. Others suggested that for some environmental concerns, the zero-sum framework was underused. That is,
we might reach better results if we confront the actual trade offs. What work does it do to label environmental problems as a zero-
sum game? In this case, climate change and biodiversity protection serve as key examples. Maybe we do need to emphasize that you
cannot have your cake and eat it too. Building that hospital will indeed lead to the extinction of a species. Putting
the
conundrum in stark terms might help highlight the need for embracing the principle of in dubio
pro natura1 (when in doubt act in favor of nature).