A new interactive Google Earth video, produced by International Rivers and Friends of the Earth International, aims to show how damming rivers around the world can exacerbate climate change.

Citing a Swiss study, a recent AP article warns that the rapid melting of glaciers due to climate change poses short-term opportunities and long-term risks for hydropower, thereby stressing the need for improving efficiency in existing hydro projects.

The end of Washington's 2009 legislative session saw constituent based Initiative 937 protected and still in effect -- but not without almost daily changes to both energy and river impacts.  

LOW POWER, BIG PROBLEMS

Hydopower Reform Coalition's paper on how Low-Power Hydropower Dams Hurt Rivers.

Whether it is in response to the environmental crisis of climate change or our overreliance on imported fuels, it is clear that America needs to act quickly to replace fossil fuel energy technologies with renewable energy. It is equally imperative, however, that we do not destroy the environment we are trying to save by blindly rushing to develop low-emissions energy sources that will result in serious environmental harm. We will not solve our energy problems by building new dams – especially inefficient low-power dams where the energy benefits fail to outweigh the environmental impacts – but we will cause irreparable harm to our rivers.

In a move that has disappointed many, FERC has rejected a request to predict and evaluate the changes in project effects that will occur as a result of climate change that is likely to impact the local patterns of precipitation, runoff, evapo-transpiration and other meteorological patterns in two watershed in California.

Environmental and recreation groups, energy developers and utilities, investors and academics present Obama Administration with a set of "Joint Principles" to guide the development of ocean renewable energy -- energy from waves, tidal and ocean current.

PowerPoint for Hydropower as a clean, renewable energy, at the University of Oregon School of Law. February 2008

Hydropower Reform Coalition comments on Washington's Department of Ecology Draft Recommendations for meeting the Washington Climate Change Challenge

The Wall Street Journal published an opinion-editorial called "Dam the Salmon," which criticizes the removal of any hydropower dams. Read American Rivers' response.