San Clemente Dam
Dam / river in Carmel River, Monterey Peninsula, California. Part of California (Literary).
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion | Jenny Odell | subject | Odell recounts the 2015 removal of the dam, the largest in California history: the river was rerouted, the dam picked apart by excavators and hammers, and steelhead trout habitat restored. |
How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell (2019)
Source: How to Do Nothing — Reader’s Companion · How to Do Nothing · Readwise highlight
Just a few hours south of here on the Carmel River, the concrete San Clemente Dam had been built in 1921 by a real estate company in the Monterey Peninsula in order to provide water to a growing number of Monterey residents.
- Role: subject
- In the book: Odell recounts the 2015 removal of the dam, the largest in California history: the river was rerouted, the dam picked apart by excavators and hammers, and steelhead trout habitat restored. She notes the strange forward-and-backward feeling of a time-lapse of construction played as destruction.
- Why it matters: It is her main worked example of ‘manifest dismantling’, progress as removal and remediation. It is a specific, real site whose story carries the argument.