Dams created a unique environment for animals

Two wrongs don’t make it right. The removal of the Elwha dams [“A grand experiment as dams come down,” page one, Sept. 18] is another of man’s attempt to adjust nature to suit his needs.

When the dams were built, it was man taking advantage of nature to fulfill his needs. The removal is just another of man’s interferences with nature. After many years, these dams have developed their own environment and the lakes provide homes for many species of fish and other animals not advantageous to man’s commercial needs.

The fight against the hatcheries by environmentalists for the renewal of wild salmon runs was predicted, but the salmon hatcheries were results of their insistence on the removal of the dams. The destruction of the present environment is not what the true naturalists want.

— Jim Morris, Renton

Dams will return for renewable energy

We have devolved from a society that built engineering triumph hydro dams for clean, renewable energy to one that now insanely destroys them for what amounts to enviro-religious voodoo.

In a scant few years we’ll be building back dams on the Elwha and as many as we can stick on other rivers just to breathe and stay warm. Then we’ll consider our current environmental Ludditism as the same spiritual ignorance exhibited by the Taliban when they “restored” the Bamiyan cliffs.

— William Slusher, Okanogan