Most intriguing Sunday story is a piece in the Eugene Register-Guard suggesting a gradual tide-turning on removal of the four eastern Washington Snake river dams. Conventional wisdom has been that, regionally, dam removal is a political non-starter. Some polls have indicated deep division in the public, but politicians overall are strongly lined up against a teardown, and that could be another indicator. And there are those studies showing a rise in electric rates if the dams were gone.
So consider this paragraph from the R-G, in profiling a farmer for whom dam removal is becoming increasingly thinkable:
It is still a relatively rare phenomenon, but one becoming more noticeable: Some members of the dams' natural constituency, such as farmers, are talking to their downriver antagonists about a future that might not include the four lower Snake River dams. There is talk of reconstituting a regional rail system to deliver Jones' wheat to Portland. There is talk of a wind farm to replace the electricity - enough to power most of Manhattan - generated by the four dams.
NOTE Should be noted, and wasn't originally: This article originated in the New York Times. And see also Kevin Richert's blog take on it.