It has struck me as odd the way homeland security is invoked every time some steward of a public place is too lazy to take care of security and provide reasonable public access.
There is also the matter of claiming homeland security is a concern when the reality is it is nothing more than an excuse for some monied entity to lay claim to a public place.
The second point is the one that I think applies most to public access to public waterways just below dams.
For example, Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna was a place where anglers, birdwatchers and other outdoor enthusiasts were allowed access that extended onto a fishing catwalk on the breast of the dam before the 2001 attacks. Boat access was permitted to the pool just below the dam.
After the attacks, public access to the fishing catwalk was ended and the no boats area was extended a good distance.
Granted, the dam's owners over the years were not necessarily obliged to provide a fishing catwalk from 1929 to 2001, but the reality is the dam did greatly affect fishing opportunities on the Susquehanna when it was built and it was built in an era when there was no FERC to require certain levels of social and ecological responsibility on the part of dam builders. Likely the catwalk was seen as a way to mollify enough of the fishing public so that the cutting off of a shad run that went as far up river as New York state would seem less painful.
Generations passed. Shad fishing in the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania is not part of living memory, so the need to mollify the fishing public was greatly diminished, and the expense of keeping the fishing catwalk in good order could be conveniently eliminated in the aftermath of attacks on high profile structures.
I should say here that Conowingo's ownership has gone back and forth on its commitment to stewardship of the river, the fisheries and the territory around the dam. In the past decade, the ownership has invested substantially in a new fishing park (thought catwalk remains closed), which is very nice. For many years, however, they also funded a "scientific" operation that did research that seemed designed to show that even if the dam were taken out, the shad run wouldn't come back. Such research is fairly commonly done on behalf of the hydroelectric industry, read research designed to demonstrate that Atlantic salmon can no longer survive and reproduce in Lake Ontario because of the presence of alewives. It's an odd claim since the Atlantic Ocean was teaming with alewives at the same time it was teaming with Atlantic salmon, but that's another rant.
While it could certainly be argued that the actions taken on the downriver side of the dam at Conowingo are indeed on behalf of increasing security, but only when the upriver side of the dam is ignored.
The actions on the downriver side are substantial, but every time I drive across the dam and look upriver, it strikes me how easy it would be for someone to load up a raft with nitroglycerine (Rooster Cogburn style) and float it right into the dam's back end.
It leaves me wondering, why all the concern about a guy carrying a tackle box and a cooler onto the catwalk, but not so much about what's floating into the dam's back end? From that perspective, it doesn't seem like the issue is homeland security at all.
One more example: drive across Conowingo from where I live and head north on U.S. 1 and in a little while you'll be at Tulpehocken Creek, where anyone can go stand on the outflow from Blue Marsh Lake and fish, or throw rocks or anything else, without anyone thinking you might be a threat to homeland security.
In my mind, dams are necessary, but they also limit public access to public places. Increasing public access to the waterways above and below dams should be a public policy goal. Imposing further limits in the name of homeland security is at best ineffectual (Rooster Cogburn example) and at worst little more than an excuse to keep the public out of public places.
