“The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.”
~ Chief Seattle
We’ve built an astounding 91,843 dams in this country, and that number only accounts for the ones that are over 6-feet high. If you add in the small ones, the number is closer to 500,000. In the name of economics and expansion, we traded brotherly kindness for concrete.
A Brief History of Dam Building in the US
For thousands of years, people have built dams to store water, control floods, and irrigate crops; in the 1800s, we learned they can generate electricity as well. The first dams built in this country up and down the East Coast were relatively small. They were used to power small mills and factories or to create fishing and swimming holes.
But as development moved west, the dams grew bigger, and the story changed. The powers that be wanted to develop every inch of this country, even the arid regions. Damming the rivers to irrigate the land and “make the desert bloom” was their plan of choice.
In the early 1900s, federal programs were created to deliver water to dry western areas, so we could offer struggling families land to live on and farm. Those programs were quickly overrun by land speculators and wound up serving the wealthy, not the poor. Soon federal agencies started to see dams as a path to money and power; the dams grew bigger and the projects more damaging.
They started to dam rivers just because they could.
I recently read Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World, by Steven Hawley. He writes a fascinating tale of the history of big dam building in the American West, and the greed and corruption that fed it. It’s well worth the read.
“In the year 2000, the World Commission on Dams … concluded that the real costs of dams have rarely been accurately estimated and were not likely to ever be fully recouped. The price of social and environmental damages were in many cases far too high, and in almost every case never fully considered.”
– Steven Hawley, Cracked
The Problem(s) With Dams
Dams and the reservoirs behind them destroy river ecosystems. They reduce water quality, degrade habitat for aquatic creatures and surrounding wildlife, prevent fish from migrating, erode shorelines, drown beautiful stretches of river, and the list of harms goes on.
The powers that be failed to include (outright ignored) the rivers’ needs in their development plans, and the consequences are now clear. The proliferation of dams in this country has led to the collapse of wild fish populations from coast to coast. And beyond that, the large-scale and widespread damming of the West set the stage for our current twin societal ills: industrial farming and the need for migrant workers.
We also know now that dams are not clean energy sources. Hydroelectric dams have long been advertised as clean, renewable sources of energy production. They don’t burn fossil fuels, which is great; no carbon emissions. But studies now tell us this isn’t the full story:
Dams worldwide emit almost a billion tons of greenhouse gases per year.
The reservoirs behind dams emit methane. When vegetation trapped at the bottom of reservoirs decays it produces methane, which rises up through the water and out into the atmosphere.
Freeing the Rivers
The good news for river lovers is that while dams are still being built, they’re coming down, too. Many of our old dams are in need of expensive safety repairs or upgrades, and the costs eventually outweigh their benefits. Especially since a lot of old dams don’t serve any purpose; like the early ones built to power mills and small factories that no longer exist.
Some dams are so old nobody remembers what they were for.
According to American Rivers, the US successfully removed 80 dams across 25 states in 2023 and 108 dams across 27 states in 2024. In total, we’ve removed just over 2,000 dams in the last century.
I’ve heard people argue that we need dams, because we need power. But according to the US National Inventory of Dams, only 3% of dams are hydroelectric. One-third of our dams are categorized as recreational.
If there is talk of dam removal in your area, and you’re wondering if it’s a good idea, my answer is this:
~ Let the rivers run free. ~
It’s time for us to be kind to our brothers (and sisters?).
For more about dam issues:
Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World
DamNation: The Problem with Hydropower
“Free Rivers: The State of Dam Removal in the United States”
This post was originally published on April 4, 2024.
Illusions