ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

French Dams: power, power, knowledge, science and knowledge

• In Event: Engineering Frontiers: Water, Expertise, and the Social Costs of Hydraulic Modernization

English Abstract

France today has approximately 2,600 dams, including around 500 that exceed 10 meters in height. The largest—those with the greatest reservoir capacity and therefore the greatest environmental impact—are hydroelectric dams, especially in the Alps. Most of these were built between the 1930s and the 1970s, at a time when the social and environmental standards now required of builders by governments and financial institutions did not yet exist.
The flooding of land, expropriations, and displacement of populations were handled according to practices that were relatively uniform from one dam to another. These practices were grounded in a legal framework built around the declaration of public utility, which granted developers the legitimacy to occupy and transform land. Expropriations were carried out in ways that were often more or less abrupt, with limited attention paid to the relocation of individuals or entire communities, in a context shaped by widespread faith in the benefits of modernization through land redevelopment.
The knowledge and expertise mobilized at the time were quite limited, and decisions often depended on the negotiating power—or lack thereof—of the affected populations. However, beginning as early as the 1930s, other forms of expertise were also enlisted to assess the impacts of dams: geology, hydrology, and studies of fish and vegetation.
We will attempt to describe and understand this differentiated mobilization of scientific knowledge in the analysis of the impact of dams, before the 1976 law imposed real impact studies (although initially focused on natural impacts).

Author

• Anne Dalmasso, Université Grenoble Alpes, LARHRA