I didn't say you were generalizing, I said that some (esp. ex post, sympathetic) resistance to removal seems to come from generalizing the removal proponents' desire to remove _these_ dams to a desire to remove _other_ dams. Resisting the removal out of concerns about irrigation (in which these dams play ~no role) or hydroelectricity (of which these dams' contribution was minimal) makes sense if the resistors assume that future efforts will move more directly against their interests. I don't think this is far off - see all the stuff in the article about Agenda21, everything being a pretext for removing the current residents, etc.

However, I hold that assumption is incorrect. I believe whole multi-decade process of local consensus-building and compromise that got to removal on the Klamath is a model for future efforts, which will be at least as sensitive to completing interests as these were. Your initial point about the shallowness of objections in TFA is testament to that process. The 'storming' episode you mention happened in ~2003. The failed deliveries from the Klamath were in 2001, and were the result of competing federal priorities (prior-appropriation private water rights, the endangered species act) coming to a head. The farmers seem to have had their concerns addressed since then - all the relevant local irrigation districts were signatories to both the (failed) Restoration Agreement and the (successful) Settlement Agreement.

I think TFA treats the most serious and well-founded objection very sensitively, toward the end:

> I find myself holding two realities in mind that seem hardly able, these days, to share the same space. The first is that the dams have amounted to an ongoing assault on Indigenous communities and rights, and on the many fish that move between fresh water and the sea; removing the barriers will right historical wrongs. The second is that the identities of many people here—their memories, ways of life, worldviews, sense of purpose, idea of home—are bound up in the dammed landscape and even the dams themselves.

This is the tension - once the competing economic and ecological interests are satisfied, the emotional interests remain. A landscape has to change, and a life-way it's supported will no long be possible in that place. That's unambiguously awful for people and families than enjoyed that landscape and life-way in the ~century since the dams were built. But their right to enjoy that landscape unchanged is not absolute; their loss has to be situated within the larger balance of costs and benefits of the project.