The Dam Issue(s)

This is the first part of the series Rivers As Relatives: Reimagining Our Relationship With Water. [Read Part 2] [Read Part 3] [Read Part 4]

“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.

To understand how we forgot our brothers, we have to look back . . .

A Brief History of Dams

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 on the East Coast were relatively small. People used them 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 areas the Earth had left waterless. Damming the rivers to irrigate the land and “make the desert bloom” was their plan of choice.

In the early 1900s, the federal government created programs to deliver water to dusty western lands, so we could offer struggling families parcels to live on and farm. The programs were supposed to lift working people out of poverty, but wealthy land speculators quickly lied and bribed their way into the system and wound up the main beneficiaries. Soon federal agencies started to see dams as a source of money and power—the dams grew bigger and the projects more damaging.

They started to dam rivers just because they could.

In his book, Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World, environmental journalist  Steven Hawley writes a fascinating tale of the history of big dam building in the American West, and the greed and corruption that fed it. The book is a passionate plea for the removal of dams and well worth the read. He writes,

“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.”

What happens when we treat our family as though their needs don’t matter?

The Problem(s) With Dams

Barricading our rivers behind walls of concrete has been a boon to those whose sole aim was to display our national engineering prowess. Dams like Hoover and Oroville stand as enormous examples of that. But in doing so, they essentially forced the Earth’s living waters to provide more than they were able, or willing, and that has had severe consequences.

What the powers that be ignored back then, and we know clearly now, is that dams and the reservoirs behind them destroy river ecosystems. They diminish water quality, degrade vital habitat for aquatic creatures and the surrounding wildlife that depends on them, prevent the fish from migrating home, erode delicate shorelines, drown beautiful stretches of river, and the list of harms goes on and on.  

The decision makers failed to honor the rivers’ natural need to flow from mountain to sea carrying snowmelt and salmon, sediment and salts. And instead took the life out of them and caused the collapse of wild fish populations from coast to coast. The native salmon that return now beat their bodies against concrete walls in a frustrated attempt to reach their home streams.

Beyond the direct harm to water and fish, the large-scale and widespread damming of the West gave rise to the unwise practice of perpetual yield industrial farming. This, in turn, created the need for migrant farm workers who labor for our year-round harvest while being denied their essential human dignity. Twin societal ills that have severely damaged and depleted water, land, and human alike.

Even the air suffers. We know now that dams are not clean energy sources. Hydroelectric dams have long been sold to us as clean, renewable sources of energy production. They don’t burn fossil fuels, which is wonderful; 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 exhale methane. Drowned forests and fields trapped beneath reservoirs decay and produce the toxic gas, which rises up through the water and escapes to the air. Compared to carbon dioxide, methane leaves the atmosphere more quickly but traps at least 28 times more heat while it’s there.

Development without brotherly kindness, it seems, leads to a long list of harms for Earth and human alike.

But there is hope. We’re beginning to remember what Chief Seattle knew: that rivers are kin, not cash registers.

Freeing the Rivers

The good news for those who love living waters is that while dams are still being built, they’re starting to come down, too. Many of the old dams are in need of expensive safety repairs or upgrades, and the costs will eventually outweigh their benefits. Especially for the early ones that don’t serve any purpose; like the ones built to power mills and small factories that no longer operate.

Some dams are so old nobody remembers what they were for.

According to the nonprofit, 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, I say:

Let the rivers run free.
Let them remember their wild ways, their unfettered flow, their oneness with the living world.

It’s time for us to be kind to our brothers (and sisters).

Surround yourself with art that honors free-flowing waters. Support organizations working to liberate rivers. Share this information with everyone you know.

And this isn’t just about liberating water—it’s also about freeing the salmon who depend on these waterways.

Continue the series: What the Salmon Know About Progress

* This post was originally published on April 4, 2024.

For more on dam issues:

Book: Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World

Documentary: DamNation: The Problem with Hydropower

Report: “Damming the American West”

Report: “Free Rivers: The State of Dam Removal in the United States”