Every time I drive through the Columbia gorge I think of what it once was and am sad that I can’t see the rapids that the Cascade Mountain range is named for.
If we “discovered” it today it would surely be some kind of national park or otherwise preserved. Instead it’s got multiple rail lines and highways running alongside a fairly smooth river.
Hard to imagine the deviation that would happen if a few of the Columbia dams failed, and the seasonal flooding would be another issue.
During the ice ages there were huge ice dams along the Columbia River, and when they broke it was crazy. There are lots of neat formations in central WA resulting from the floods [1].
I second the recommendation for Geology Nick but some of his videos are introductory and some are meant for his geology students. Take a look at [2] for some introductory ones.
I haven't visited that gorge but know the feeling well. One of my favorite spots in the world is Grand Staircase National Monument which, among other things, is an amazing fossil resource.
The last administration tried hard to destroy much of the monument largely for coal mining. It boggles my mind that we destroy beautiful landscapes and 200 million year old fossil records for nothing more than the ability to burn a little more coal for a handful of years.
Pretty fucked up seeing as it supplies the area with residential water as well as irrigation. Without it much of the surrounding will be barren. You can see the difference on satellite pictures of Crimea from when Ukraine closed the channel after Russian takeover.
Article mentions it as well.
>However, that decision is likely to be made. Tuboltsev tries to be realistic, noting that thousands of homes, businesses, and farms depended on the reservoir for their water supply, and there simply may not be other options.
edit: Thanks for the correction! Apparently barren isnt synonymous with infertile. I meant the later.
It’s worse than that - the farms in the area are situated on the most fertile kind of soil in the world. These are important wheat growers on a global scale.
I dont think the flooding reached that far. Point of filling up the damn before blowing it was to create a wide as possible flood to make crossing the area impossible. So its unlikely that the flooding without the damn would have reached much further?
Residential use isn't a lot, as the area is very sparsely populated, so it's about using less water-intensive crops there. Farmers will have to adapt to not having a dam for the next few years anyway, so reasoning goes -- maybe we will not rebuild the dam once everybody figured out what to do without it.
Barren is quite a stretch. Here is what a natural reserve in the area looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askania-Nova. People lived in the South before the dam was build and will live there regardless of it being rebuild.
>Residential use isn't a lot, as the area is very sparsely populated,
Crimea and Cherson are both not small.
Sorry about the use of the word barren, this isnt my first language. I meant agriculture will be over. The satellite pictures of Crimea i saw a while back looked quite drastic, this wont be any different. And as the other poster pointed out correctly, this is fertile wheat area.
What kind of alternative crop did you have in mind? I havent heard of any feasible suggestions.
The point of the dam was not providing the water for Kherson city (it's on the river and doesn't have this problem), it was energy generation and irrigation of water-intensive crops, because soviet union needed cash and electricity for the industry. So all the space that could have been used to grow wheat was used to grow wheat. Since the time it was build, everything has changed quite a few times (fertiliziers, more yields, new sorts of wheat, deindustrialization of the 1990ies), so decisions made right after WW2 may not make economical sense anymore.
I suspect it will be delayed, debated and maybe we will have a smaller dam or a cascade of multiple smaller dams, but really doubt the original dam will be rebuilt to provide water security and still keep some historical sites accessible.
>What kind of alternative crop did you have in mind? I havent heard of any feasible suggestions.
I don't remember what was the suggestion and take it with a grain of salt, but I heard some ecologists debating things. Something has to happen to the land while the dam is not there regardless of the future decision, so I hope time will tell. It's quite possible to not be feasible to do either and the area will be given historical and ecological reserve status in the end.
The time frame is a good point. Would be great if some less water intensive innovation would be the result. Bit skeptical though, once the grain export becomes a non issue again Ukraine will need all the exports they can get.
> The satellite pictures of Crimea i saw a while back looked quite drastic, this wont be any different. And as the other poster pointed out correctly, this is fertile wheat area.
To be specific, Crimea is not (Kherson is). Crimea is mostly dry steppes. They used to grow quite a bit of rice there, but that was because of the dam and the water it provided.
If you lived anywhere in Ukraine, you're probably familiar with Kherson watermelons, strawberries, potatoes... You name it. And lots has been written about its wheat.
Here are reasons I can think of for either side of the conflict to blow the dam up.
We need to note that contextually, the dam was blown up at the start of Ukraine's Counter-Offensive against the Russian positions in the south of the country.
Purely mechanically looking at "who benefits" I have the following understanding.
Reasons it could have benefited Ukraine:
1. The flooding destroyed the Russian first lines of defence along the Dnipro as well as their artillery ranging Kherson
2. The flooding created an emergency situation on the ground requiring evacuations and therefore double-tasking Russian forces which were supposed to defend the primary surge toward Tokmak
3. The destruction of the dam makes Russian occupation of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant more difficult
4. The destruction of the dam makes Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula (which gets its water from the dam) more difficult
Reasons it could have benefited Russia:
1. If Ukraine's counter-offensive had included an attack across the Dnipro, this action would have delayed that front, allowing Russian forces to focus on the three other main fronts. (Based on what we know now it appears this was not part of Ukraine's action plan, but that's not to rule it out entirely)
The argument is about what caused the dam to fail. For some reason Russia haters are insisting the only possibility is an explosion. Photographic evidence shows that Russia allowed the dam to overflow which caused the collapse. Only one thing can be true. Both possibilities are clearly the responsibility of Russia in any case. But unfortunately Russia haters have decided it must have been explosives and so the truth has become the enemy as is usually the case whenever Russia is involved.
...but what you replied to didn't mention explosives.
I'm a .ru.gov hater, and I don't have an answer save that mentioned: if Russia hadn't have invaded, the dam would probably still be intact.
OK, let me refine my recap: you are arguing that to assess responsibility for atrocities is to invite genocide? Or that our best course is to ignore culpability? - passive acceptance of any outrage?
I believe your error stems from looking at my comment regarding what implications it would have on your position. Those assumed implications are however erroneous.
I am telling you initial cause blame attribution is open ended and thus dangerous. Thats why it cant be used. Because there is some stuff that cant be justified. If you go down the path of Russia is to blame not because they did it, but because they started it, you are writing a blank check for anything that happens afterwards.
This statement says nothing about removing any blame from Russia, its just the statement that some stuff is unjustifiable. Which is why those lines of reasoning are not a good idea.
As i pointed out in another post, it also shifts the narrative from Russia blew up a dam to Ukraine would have been allowed to do that. Thats cognitive warfare, straight out of GRUs active measures. Which is also why my other post wasnt concern trolling. They are actively doing that and attention needs to be paid unless you want GRU dictating how you think about Ukraine.
Worrying about some hypothetical genocide against Russians that might or might not manifest whenever someone points out a direct consequence of Russia's genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine has to be the height of cynicism.
You can't post like this here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
Perhaps you don't owe people who you feel are making wrong points about genocide better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Edit: you've unfortunately broken the site guidelines elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37707103), and we've already had to warn you about this kind of thing. We end up having to ban accounts that ignore such warnings and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please stick to using the site as intended, we'd appreciate it.
You seem to be a genuine account. It amazes me that you thought this to be a reasonable comment.
I looked at my comment again and its pretty clear that i was talking about the kind of reasoning, not the specific argument. Please think before you post.
Once you stop judging stuff on its own you can justify anything. Its why its not sensible to do that.
> Thats a really dangerous and reckless line of reasoning
No, it's really not. There needs to be accountability and punishment for war crimes. Nobody is calling for 'genocide' or whatever the hell you're talking about.
Is it absolutely certain that there were explosives at all? I remember hearing arguments that sufficiently large explosives would have created a seismic signature that was not detected. The claim there was that it was negligence that caused it to collapse. Still absolutely Russia's fault, but it doesn't look like malice. (FWIW this was Ryan McBeth on YouTube, who I don't think is the most credible, but his argument here made sense).
russia will throw in a hundred of bad faith arguments and outright ignore reality (no seismic signature, suuure) to mud the water, so be sceptical about everything anybody is saying about the whole thing. They even blew up the dam before and inflicted more casualties on themselves too, so “look who benefits“ isn’t reliable either
The Russians previously blew up the Kakhovka dam, before the time it collapsed? I didn't hear about that. Anyway, this was a distinctly pro-Ukraine source, so I think he was at least in good faith, even if he was way off.
> There were signs of an explosion at the time of the breach. Both Ukrainian and Russian sources reported hearing blasts from the dam's hydroelectric power station,[3][4] regional seismometers detected explosions in the area,[5][8] and a satellite detected the infrared heat signature of an explosion.
Guess I'll cite my sources, huh? https://youtu.be/6z4rhBKTT5U?si=LAieHjZIPzkQ2S8F Short version: he shows satellite photos consistent with progressive damage to the dam (likely due to poor maintenance), especially near the collapse point, in the months prior to the collapse. The evidence seems difficult to fake with too high a risk/reward, and his argument from that evidence is cogent without overreaching like someone who was trying to be sensationalist.
He also casts a bit of doubt on the Norwegian seismic detection claim (claim: heavy duty explosives plus a collapse should have produced two distinct bumps, while the trace only shows one), but I definitely remembered wrong on that particular point.
Satellite photos show pretty clearly that the dam was allowed to overflow which caused the collapse. Russia didn't need explosives. Total irresponsibility, much like you are exhibiting now, was enough.
What is this garbage? Everyone knows that Russia was responsible because they were the only ones around. The consequences were obviously a disaster. Why are you lying?
The argument goes that calling it a "disaster" is shortening the phrase "natural disaster". This isn't entirely true; there are man-made disasters like global warming or pollution. However, when talking about an intentionally caused man-made disaster, we don't usually call that a disaster, we call it an atrocity or a war crime, and we name and shame who caused it.
Cool your jets, there is no lying here. squidbeak knows Russia did it and is criticizing the headline for the passive voice "Dam disaster" which doesn't make the intentional nature of the disaster caused by Russia clear.
The intentional nature of the disaster is not an established and proven fact. It suits Ukrainian narrative of painting everything that Russia does as yet another heinous genocidal act, but at least in some cases (including this one) negligence is also a plausible explanation (i.e. it could happen because of not paying enough attention to maintenance and stocking ammunition where it should not be) [1]. This of course does not remove responsibility from Russia: even if in a very unlikely scenario it was sabotaged by Ukraine as Russia claims, it would not happen if Russia has not invaded Ukraine. Still it is important to have an objective view on the events to make sure that real crimes get enough attention from the public and that proper investigation of the events is done.
That said, given that we do not have yet a better understanding of what has happened, the headline is accurate enough and complaints about it look like pro-Ukrainian propaganda rather than an attempt to share the truth.
Temporary destruction of farmland isn't nearly at the level of a priority as fighting for territorial control of your country. Ukraine has in fact flooded farmland (outside Kiev) as a countermeasure against Russian activity.
I don't imagine this objection as rising nearly the to level of overriding the priorities of war objectives / victory.
This both sides rhetoric kinda breaks down in the face of there being a very clear aggressor/invader to this conflict. A dam was destroyed because it was occupied by an invading force. The invading force was there because the invadee would not join the Eurasian Economic Union. Russia did not choose diplomacy.
> Most people who die in wars do so in “boring” ways like collateral damage, shrapnel from firefights, or even starvation. That is what happened in Bucha...
This passage alone is why the OP shouldn't be taken seriously.
On the contrary, the “boring” deaths should be taking very seriously, there is nothing light or humorous about pointing out that most people die not from sensationalized ways that make good headlines, but from avoidable conflicts.
For example four US State Department employees killed in Benghazi Libya got wayyyyy more coverage than the millions of Libyans living in a violent failed state, including the thousands who were just killed in a Kakhovka-like dam disaster directly attributable to NATO’s invasion in 2011.
Or for example one Kashoggi got wayyyy more coverage than the millions facing starvation in Yemen. YCombinator even mused aloud whether they can take Saudi money BECAUSE OF KASHOGGI. This is obscene! What about the other people, do they count? Did millions of dead Afghans count? Bengalis?
As for Bucha — yes of course there were war crimes which should be fully investigated and prosecuted, and dozens of people were killed in gruesome ways. But FAR MORE people in Bucha were killed in the way I said — shrapnel during a firefight - fleschettes indiscriminately hitting civilians including with neutral white armbands:
That should not be surprising. You should look past media’s hunger for sensationalism… I spoke to ACTUAL PEOPLE who went through Bucha afternath, I heard eyewitness accounts from people from Kyiv who were there and saw the holes in top floors ripped by tanks, firing at fighters that have RPGs. And even the Azov battallion had people in Bucha, deployed to fight agains the tanks…
…and ALL of it could have been avoided, including while the tanks were going to Kyiv in a comically slow plodding way, with stops along the way “running out of fuel”. Here is the Israeli PM in his own words saying he negotiated a truce in principle between the two presidents, but was blocked by USA and UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yma0LxyVVs
Much of what I have personally (anecdotally) seen around proximate cause seem to point to Russian sabotage. I find arguments like this to be pointless though as we will all have our pet theories and research we want to believe as we are not likely to find definitive proof. It is easier to just point out that the side that gains the most from this and bears ultimate responsibility for this is Russia as that is irrefutable
In every conflict in the world, one side always says it’s the other’s fault completely. And that the other side didn’t engage in diplomacy in good faith. But many of them are proxy wars between large imperial interests, that topple governments and undermine democracies. For example in Yemen, the Sunnis say that Iran is completely at fault for fomenting a Houthi revolution and and all the blame falls squarely on them. While Iran would say that they simply gave moral support to Houthi rebels and that the Sunni hegemony and Saudi coalition has been committing war crimes for decades and Yemenites are fed up with it.
Depending on if you were Sunni or Shiite, Jewish or Arab, you’d often be so biased that any hint of additional context or nuance would sound preposterous. But as rational people we should avoid one-sided narratives, whether it is in Niger, Armenia, etc. Usually the same patterns repeat and sectarian violence happens in the aftermath of the fall of an empire (Ottoman, British, Russian, etc.) It happens in much the same way, and each side blames the other (eg Pakistani Muslims vs Indian Hindus). We as imperial countries simply take sides and our public is told what to think (“we were always at war eith eastasia”.)
Conflicts always have multiple sides. When you live inside one empire or another (Russia, China, USA), the mainstream media’s rhetoric is always one-sided. But the rest of the world outside the bubble (billions of people) see both sides.
As usual, most of these conflicts could have been avoided, in dozens of ways, if cooler heads prevailed at any point for decades.
I collected all context you are probably missing in one place, so you can better understand the conflict from other sides: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=397
Ultimately one side invaded another and chose violence instead of diplomacy as you pointed out in your original comment. This party has a history of such violence. Any other extrapolations are mostly moot and pointless
There is no “ultimately” in history, that eclipses everything that led up to it, or since it. Everything has significant reasons that led up to it, and understanding those reasons and legitimate concerns from all parties is KEY to making lasting peace agreements. Click the link above to find out what they are.
Here are more links showing leaders of billions of people, and the polls of the people themselves, seeing more than one side and putting blame on USA and NATO for instance, for backing Russia into a corner like a cornered animal, arming Ukraine, blocking all peace agreements and efforts and goading it to lash out with this horrific pre-emptive invasion, which has been systematically called in the US “unprovoked and unjustified” as a concerted effort to make you not look at the man behind the curtain:
Even in the centers of the most hawkish anti-Russian sentiment we have leaders warning about all this before it even started. For example Nigel Farage in UK 2014:
Here in the US, dire warnings about NATO expansion were given by every single ambassador to Russia, and every foreign policy expert concurred (including the architect of the USSR containment policy), but were systematically ignored by the Clinton and Bush administrations:
And even last year, US politicians slightly outside the establishment got together and tried to call for peace talks. They were swiftly rebuked by the Biden administration:
Today, most Republicans running for president, and many in Congress, are skeptical of the narrative, and would take steps to usher in peace if they got more power.
So no — ignoring BILLIONS of people, EXPERTS in our own countries whose job it is to study these things, and even political leaders in OUR country, is not reasonable. There is a war hawk “establishment” in imperial countries (USA, Russia, China) that always pushes for more conflict, if it is allowed, and intelligence agencies work behind the topple democracies and make it happen, until the more civilian-level policians (eg State department) get involved once the ground is set: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JoW75J5bnnE
Educate yourself to see why there is more than one side to this.
I gave you a master link to everything, but here are great documentaries also from 2014 when it all went down:
No sorry I'm simply pointing you back to your own rhetoric. You're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm a NATO or America apologist. I just find it laughable the mental hoops that some people will jump through to avoid pointing the finger at the most violent party to this conflict. There was a diplomatic solution to be found, Russia chose violence. They used lies and deceit to justify it as they have in all conflicts since 1991. Ultimately they wage war for the sake of capitalist ambitions just as all of those other governments and institutions you listed
Well, many people here ARE apologists for USA and NATO, they simply don’t know what they have done, or really anything outside the cherrypicked narrative they have been carefully shown by their domestic maintream media. (Similar to people in Russia and China being conditioned by their governments.)
But what do you mean by mental hoops? Let me reiterate, the view is held by:
Billions of people, and their leaders outside the NATO bubble
You gotta start realizing the role George W Bush played in all this, at the very least — pushing for Ukraine in NATO at the very time when its own public overwhelmingly opposed it.
The mental hoops are for those who continue to repeat the stock phrases
“open door policy”
“purely defensive”
“unprovoked and unjustified”
“weapons of mass destruction”
“hacked the election”
“axis of evil”
“they hate us for our freedoms”
These phrases are carefully tested w focus groups, and dropped if they don’t work (eg “islamofascism” and “crusade” was briefly used by Bush admin before being retired in favor of “weapons of mass destruction” and “axis of evil”.)
I think the post I responded to doesnmt address much of anything I said in the post that it was responding to. But I digress. I tried to address the fact that my posts aren’t directed ONLY to that one person but to other readers here too. What did I not address?
There was a diplomatic solution to be found, Russia chose violence. They used lies and deceit to justify it as they have in all conflicts since 1991. Ultimately they wage war for the sake of capitalist ambitions just as all of those other governments and institutions you listed
This? Ok. Well, I am glad the post mentioned that Russia is just one of multiple imperialist countries, who wage war for the sake of capitalist ambitions. Russia also waged this specific war, and the one in Georgia, to preserve its Black Sea fleet, and prevent its neighbors from joining an enemy alliance (NATO) whose raison d’etre even after the fall of the Soviet Union was to be a military alliance against Russia. This isn’t purely Capitalist.
When Kennedy blockaded and threatened Cuba and led to the Cuban missile crisis, the justification was well-understood: USA cannot afford to have a country on its border allied with its geopolitical rivals and pave the way for missiles to be placed pointing at US cities, ready to strike them within a few minutes. I can understand Kennedy. But back then, these statesmen (Kennedy and Khrustchev) went about it constructively, they established a direct line between the highest levels to avoid a misunderstanding, and Kennedy gave a peace speech in which he said “… Above all, nuclear powers should avoid bringing the other to a choice between a humiliating defeat or a nuclear war. To pursue that course of action in the nuclear age would show the bankruptcy of our foreign policy or a collective death-wish for the world.”
Yet today the very thing Kennedy warned about is the explicit policy of the Biden admin and establishment. No talks. No negotiations. Push to a humiliating retreat — they won’t dare start a nuclear war. All the while volunteering Ukrainians to a meat grinder that could have been avoided. And the justification for no direct line, no talks sounds like kindergarteners: “but he staaaarted it!”
Incidentally, before the Cuban missile crisis the US secretly put nuclear missiles on Turkey aimed at USSR. But when USSR did that in Cuba we freaked out. We took the missiles off Turkey. Incidentally, today we have missiles in Turkey again pointed at Russia — the very thing that was “too close” last time. Don’t you see that we are constantly inching closer and provoking / poking the bear… so to say it’s “unprovoked” is strange.
In 1954 USSR applied to NATO and was rejected, NATO said it seemed like such a joke that they wouldn’t take it seriously. In the early 2000s Putin openly said he wanted Russia to join NATO. Bush rejected Russia but forcibly pushed Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, even when their own population didn’t want it. My question is - why? When does the US choose diplomacy that it actually upholds? Native Americans? North Korea? Iran? All diplomatic treaties broken by the very next administration. We do not have a good track record of keeping our diplomatic commitments but somehow others are supposed to trust us implicitly cause it’s us.
Russia and Ukraine did choose diplomacy. Minsk agreements I and II. Normandy Format meetings. And one week into the war both Putin and Zelensky were ready to sign an agreement to resolve everything. Naftali Bennett said that the US killed the deal!
Merkel admitted the Minsk II agreements were to “buy time to arm Ukraine”. And Zelensky openly and proudly said this year he never intended to implement the Minsk accords — despite running on that very platform and being elected to make peace! And all throughout 2021 Russia warned and warned and asked NATO for guarantees that they wouldn’t place missiles in Ukraine etc. and was told that they are not open to negotiation.
https://apnews.com/article/business-russia-ukraine-moscow-se...
And yet somehow it’s only Russia singled out as as “not engaging in diplomacy”? To characterize that way is, in my opinion, betraying an unmistakbd double standard / bias.
Don’t get me wrong, I very much want for there to be a diplomatic solution, along the lines of Minsk II. I would love it if the next US president would be an adult, apologize for Bush’s admin and come up with a roadmap whereby Ukraine, Georgia and Russia will all join NATO on the same day in some time in future, but to do that they must agree to a roadmap that starts with a cease fire, restoring relations, then eventually solving their border disputes (yes with Georgia too), and working together to rebuild.
But the current war hawks would NEVER accept that, because that would strengthen Russia and Ukraine and Georgia etc. And as Adam Schiff put it well in 2019: “we aid Ukraine and her people so they can fight the Russians over there — so we don’t have to fight them over here.” https://m.facebook.com/IndianMilitaryUpdate/videos/united-st...
If we stopped flipping Russia’s neighbors against it, then they might actually grow strong enough again as a military and economic bloc to compete with us on a level playing field, economically and otherwise, and we don’t want that! We don’t want China to either!
I just didn’t want to be accused of not addressing what people said.. the topic is very important and I was just trying to relate what billions of people around the world seem to be thinking.
Well. Do you really think Ukrainians managed to sneak a ton or more of explosives far into Russian territory and into a guarded power plant?
Or shall we be more realistic and just add a disclaimer that this isn't finally settled but everything suggest that the same people who boasted about being able to pull this off did it? The same war criminals that are behind close to 100% of the other war crimes in this war was behind this too?
I'm not sure there is any conflict where "close to 100%" of war crimes are committed by one side. I'm not trying to "both-sides" this discussion, but that is in all likelihood an overstatement.
The destruction of the dam is so devastating to Ukraine that it is honestly insulting to even consider that Ukraine could have done this.
I don't think people in this chat realize the absolute horror of this dam destruction and how it has deeply destroyed the area, and been such an immense hit to the morale of Ukraine.
Only those with no connection or knowledge of the area, or the knowledge of the ecological and economic destruction, would even contemplate that Ukraine could have done this intentionally.
You are acting as a caricature right now. He made a sensible comment that it was off topic to the article, your insult is completely uncalled for.
I mention this because it paints a horrible picture about Ukraine supporters. Unless you are a Russian sock puppet aiming for that result, you really shouldnt be doing this.
This claim makes zero sense. The Russians had already withdrawn their army so the opportunity to trap them was nil. Not only that but any future opportunity to trap them was also lost. Meanwhile the Russians got a free moat at a crucial moment when they were retreating and the Ukrainian counter offence was stopped in its tracks.
In WWII the Russians blew up a damn on the same river (killing tens of thousands of their own civilians) to stop the Germans advancing. It’s the most Russian tactic ever. This is exactly how they fight.
Yes we don't know who controlled the dam and would be able to place required amount of explosives in the location they were detonated at. It's shrouded in mystery.
Every credible source points to the dam being blown by a ton or more of explosives inside it.
Read up on dam busters to get an idea what it would take to destroy such a thing from the outside and then remember this dam was newer and IIRC designed to survive a nuclear war.
> Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.
> The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.
If we “discovered” it today it would surely be some kind of national park or otherwise preserved. Instead it’s got multiple rail lines and highways running alongside a fairly smooth river.
Hard to imagine the deviation that would happen if a few of the Columbia dams failed, and the seasonal flooding would be another issue.