Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sound

Can a massive hydro electric dam be built along Long Island Sound ? The dam could be built between the north fork of Long Island and Connecticut.
The sound's water level could be lowered a few feet. another dam could be built between NYC by the East River area .
The electricty produced and the money changing hands from such a massive engineering project would be beneficial to the whole area.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Expensive

Drainage in adjacent areas would probably exceed evaporation, so the area between the dams would probably end up with a level above the ocean.

Would have a majoraffect on the movement of wildlife and the salt concentration for the area between the dams, so the environmentalists would tie it up in court for centuries.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Massive dams are a terrible idea in any context. They aren't really a good way of generating electrical power, just a way of advertising political and economic power. They're things that governments build as monuments to themselves. They accomplish nothing that a larger number of smaller dams couldn't achieve, other than feeding politicians' egos and pocketbooks. And they do incalculable damage to the surrounding environment -- not to mention the disruption and relocation of surrounding populations and the irrecoverable loss if historical or archaeological sites are flooded.

It's already virtually a given that China's massive Three Gorges Dam -- whose construction process has been plagued with corruption and shortcuts that render it far less safe and structurally sound than the government insists on pretending it is -- is doomed to fail and cause a disaster of monumental proportions, probably within our lifetimes. It's already created a human disaster through the forced relocation and disenfranchisement of millions of residents of the area to be flooded, without sufficient effort being made to find them new homes (again due to rampant corruption, with money meant for that process going into local officials' pockets along with the money meant for constructing the thing safely). All because of human hubris and the naive belief that bigger is better. The last thing we should do is make the same stupid, tragic mistake.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

the dams would be built with the intention of lowering the water level in long island sound, not raising it. the turbines creating electricity would never stop turning and the whole area would benefit.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

RobertVA already explained why it wouldn't benefit the area. Whatever their purpose, dams on that scale are never a benefit to anything except human arrogance.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Intent won't lower the water level. Only pumping the water away or evaporation will lower the water surface below sea level. If there's enough rain and snow draining into the area between the dams to keep up with evaporation the ONLY way to lower the water level would be to pump the water out, which would use more energy than would be generated when you let water back in (which would fill the area back up to sea level again).

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

What would be the benefit of effectively destroying the reason so many people moved there in the first place?

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

could a series of locks be constructed along with the dams ?

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Probably, but you know Bush would just send in divers to blow up the locks and levees.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Okay, since this thread is having something resembling a life, and the other thread where this subject was brought up isn't, I'm going to close that one.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

A German architect by the name of Herman Sorgel had a similar idea for the Straits of Gibraltar. His intentions were not entirely just, since, in the grand plan of his “Atlantropa”, Africa and the Middle East would be colonized and subjugated by enlightened Europeans as a means to harness their potential and stave off the economic and cultural threat of emerging America and the “Yellow Peril” of the rising Asian nations.

What’s your plan, dumbdumb? The rise of the mighty Manhattan Empire? Considering most of the tax collected in the State of New York and the energy produced goes to New York City, I believe this dream has already come true . . .

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

DumbDumb, if your plan is NYC secession, that's one that's been bandied about for somewhere around a century, if not longer.

 

Re: Build a massive hydro electric dam along Long Island Sou

Condensing all of these threads into one at this thread.