"I hiked and boated and camped beside the Colorado River before Glen Canyon was built in the 1960s. In those years it was a wild, unpredictable, brown, sediment-laden stream flooding into the early summer, then settling down in the winter... Today, you see an ice-cold, Jell-O-green river, manipulated up and down, rising and falling on a daily cycle, flushed with the regularity, and predictability, of a giant toilet. Dams are not America's answer to the pyramids of Egypt. We did not build them for religious purposes and they do not consecrate our values (even if some are named after presidents). Dams do, in fact, outlive their function. When they do, some should go."

Which eco-warrior is responsible for these radical-sounding quotes? Many of us will likely think they must be from Ed Abbey, whose book The Monkeywrench Gang sought most of all to destroy the Glen Canyon Dam and liberate the Colorado River. Or we'd wonder if these words were uttered by David Brower who later came to bitterly regret that, as head of the Sierra Club, he once capitulated to the damming of Glen Canyon as a compromise designed to save the Grand Canyon from a similar fate.

But no, this statement is from the United States Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. In a shocking August 4 speech delivered to the Ecological Society of America, Babbitt implied that the time for monstrous dam projects was waning. Indeed, Babbitt has been touring the country this summer with a sledgehammer, striking the first blows in the dismantling of six dams.

Has the Interior Secretary realized the environmental and social catastrophe brought on by federal water projects? Will we soon see the dismantling of all the dams that have destroyed or are threatening countless species in riparian areas? Dare we allow ourselves to hope?

Some of us remember when former Interior Secretary Don Hodel suggested in the late '80's the possibility of dismantling O'Shaugnessey Dam, the one that plugged Yosemite's Hetch-Hetchy Valley and broke John Muir's heart. At Hodel's photo opportunity (see EF!J, November 1, 1987), media-savvy activists presented him with an Earth First! t-shirt. We can sardonically note that nothing came of that in the following decade, reminding us of the lyrics of Ani DiFranco: "The system gives you just enough...To make you think that you see change...They'll sing you right to sleep...And then screw you just the same."

Like Pavlov's dog, salivating upon hearing the bell regardless of the absence of food, radical environmentalists have been trained by harsh experience to react cynically to politicians and their photo ops and stump speeches. We're usually right when we smell a hidden agenda in them. Most movement people feel most comfortable expecting the worst. Hope dashed is even more painful than expected and ongoing loss.

Certainly, there is little reason to trust Babbitt. He started out with some promise, attacking grazing subsidies and the 1872 Mining Act. He soon retreated, however, forced to by his own administration and a hostile Congress. He subsequently has presided over many of the worst environmental debacles of the Clinton administration, including the "Option 9" sell-out that resulted in logging 17 percent of the remaining old growth in the Pacific Northwest. He certainly did not curb the devastation brought on by the super-ax-hacker "salvage" rider. Perhaps worst of all, Babbitt has championed (not just acquiesced to), the Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs) in their "no surprises" version. Such HCPs punch a bulldozer-sized loophole through the Endangered Species Act (ESA), empowering private property owners to kill (or "take" in the Orwellian doublespeak of today's resource law) numerous threatened and endangered species. The no surprises clause lawlessly obliterates the ESA's requirement that endangered species decisions be based on the best available science.

Of course, Babbitt is only one bureaucrat, and much of what has transpired under this administration cannot be laid at his feet. At one time, he was one of the strongest voices challenging corporate domination in American politics. It is possible (although we vehemently disagree) for a reasonable person, recognizing the need for quick action, to believe that HCPs, even with a no surprises clause, would do more good than harm.

And certainly a fair-minded analysis will recognize the power of Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) who controls the budget of the Department of Interior. Gorton is doing all he can to prevent allocation of funds for the dismantling of the Elwha dams in his home state. Indeed, he is holding hostage the project and the river until Babbitt coughs up the ransom: that all future dam removal would require Congressional approval. With a hostile Congress in place and the additional red tape such approval would demand, his agenda will chill further efforts to overturn the dam culture.

Perhaps Babbitt will persist with his objective to review and dismantle bad dams. His record, however, does not inspire confidence. He once stood strongly against drilling in the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge, but in early August announced exploratory drilling there. He chastised the Park Service for killing the buffalo in Yellowstone but did not stop the slaughter or secure safe haven throughout their range. He has made a concerted effort and some progress toward restoring the Everglades, but these efforts now appear stalled. He believes in and has taken heat for supporting a more positive approach to wildfires and prescribed burns and has supported the reduction of cars from many National Parks, but he has not succeeded in transforming the cultures of the foot-dragging agencies charged with implementing such changes. He supports the ESA (in theory) and even strongly attacks Republican adversaries of it. However, his desire to show that his implementation of the ESA is sound has led him to a legally and scientifically unsound de-listing of some 29 endangered species.

Equally damaging, his various resource agencies continue to stonewall the ESA by refusing to list other eligible species. Repeatedly, US courts have ruled that these agencies, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, have broken the law by denying protection to imperiled species. Fortunately, the extent to which Babbitt is handcuffed by forces beyond his control should not unduly affect our hopes of dam dismantlement.

There are powerful economic interests behind the idea. People like to eat fish, and there are powerful economic interests involved in satisfying that growing desire. Both fisherman and fish-eaters vote. Angling is the most popular form of recreation among Americans, with 43 percent dropping a line sometime during '98. Fish have a constituency. Politicians need one.

Perhaps such pressures help explain why Babbitt now acknowledges that, "Roughly one-third of all fish, two-thirds of all crayfish and three-quarters of the bivalve freshwater mussels in America are now rare or threatened with extinction."

It is now well known, of course, that many fish species are decimated by dams and that "mitigation" (from fish ladders to barge-transportation) has failed to stabilize their populations. Given this growing public recognition, we cannot resist feeling some hope. A small voice is crying out from the wilderness saying, "Take heart! Every breakthrough begins with a crack!" Indeed, in 1981, Earth First!ers unfurled a huge plastic crack down the face of the Glen Canyon dam. Those activists probably never thought the Secretary of the Interior would be, with apparent passion, agreeing with them 17 years later.

So despite the bitter experiences of ongoing losses, we see encouraging signs in Babbitt's latest speech. Politicians are finally recognizing that ordinary people care about ecological integrity and certainly about fisheries. Politicians and the people themselves have learned a lot about how dams threaten both of these values. Politicians increasingly recognize that there may be negative political consequences for them if they ignore such facts. For these changes, radical environmentalism can proudly take some credit, perhaps even a lion's share. After 15 years of anti-dam activism, the government is finally beginning to admit that dams, the cornerstone of its water policies, are often ill-advised.

We may have failed to win the scientific and moral debates rapidly enough to save many fish and other species imperiled by dams, logging and the rest. But when your adversaries begin talking as you think, then celebrateïat least a little! We're increasingly gaining a rhetorical advantage and gaining leverage to shame policy makers and agency personnel into doing the right thing.

A good starting point would be to take out the Glen Canyon dam while initiating a comprehensive ecological review of all dams. The logic of Babbitt's recent statements calls for such an evaluation. Babbitt seems to understand the importance and scale of the task at hand. Referring to the 75,000 dams choking the rivers of this country he urged his ecologist audience:

"Think about that number. That means we have been building, on average, one large dam a day, every single day, since the Declaration of Independence. Many of these dams have become monuments, expected to last forever. You could say forever just got a lot shorter."

As we tip our glasses enjoying how we are contributing to seismic shifts in public opinion, we wonder out loud, "How can we intensify the pressure so as to accelerate this process?" To a significant extent, we're winning the educational battle. It's time we strategize how to take our long-term struggle to dismantle destructive dams to the next level.