April
2001
Dam
Removal Success Stories
By American Rivers, Friends of the
Earth, and Trout Unlimited
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The
following is an edited excerpt from “Dam Removal Success Stories:
Restoring Rivers Through Selective Removal of Dams that Don’t
Make Sense”
Over the past 100 years, the U.S. led the world in dam building—blocking
and harnessing rivers for a variety of purposes, including hydropower,
irrigation, flood control, and water storage. The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers has catalogued approximately 75,000 dams greater than six
feet tall along the waterways of the U.S.—and at least tens of
thousands of smaller dams plug our rivers across the country. The National
Research Council estimates that the total number of U.S. dams is over
2.5 million.
Few human actions have more significant impacts on a river system than
the presence of a dam. As a result, dams occupy a central role in the
debate about protecting and restoring our river resources. Many of the
major environmental campaigns in the U.S., and around the world, have
revolved around efforts to fight construction of large dams. Hetch Hetchy,
Marble Gorge, Bridge Canyon, Tellico, and Three Gorges are all examples
of pivotal campaigns focused on the environmental, economic, and societal
costs and benefits associated with building a new dam.
A less known page in the history of rivers is the large number of dams
that have been removed. Relatively little attention has been paid to
the hundreds of smaller dams that have been torn down and the thousands
of miles of free-flowing rivers that have been restored. The decision
to remove a dam is not as radical an idea as some today may suggest.
Just as for any building or other human construction, dams have finite
lifetimes and for decades dam removal has been an accepted approach
for dam owners to deal with unsafe, unwanted, or obsolete dams.
Why Remove Dams?
Many older dams have outlived their intended purpose and now serve
no official use. Thousands of dams in the U.S. were built generations
ago, powering mills that fueled this country’s leap into the industrial
age. Although these dams served an important purpose in their day,
today
many of them have outlived that purpose. The mills have gone, but the
dams remain as a memory of an age gone by. These dams are often abandoned
by the original owner, which requires the state to take over the obligation
of safety repairs and other maintenance, thus placing large economic
burdens on taxpayers.
Clearly dam removal is not appropriate for all—or even most—of
the nation’s 75,000 large dams. Many dams continue to serve public
or private functions such as flood control, irrigation, and hydropower
generation. This does not mean, however, that rivers should continue
to be heavily impacted by these dams. Most dams across the country
could
be operated in a fashion that reduces their current negative impacts
on the river. In hundreds of cases nationally, our organizations work
to improve the operations of functional and economically viable hydropower
dams through active participation in the federal licensing process.
However, some dams cause such significant environmental damage that
no amount of reoperation will alleviate the environmental harm. For
these dams, where the environmental impacts of the dam outweigh its
benefits, dam removal is a reasonable and viable solution for restoring
river functions.
Lessons from Past Removals
There is an enormous amount to learn from past dam removals for
river restoration advocates, local communities, dam owners, and federal,
state and local resource agencies. Removal is often the most environmentally-sound,
cost-effective way to address the various safety, economic, and ecological
issues surrounding an aging and/or obsolete dam. Dam removal has been
shown to provide significant benefits to a river, river system, and
riverside communities, including: restoring river habitat, improving
water quality, reestablishing fish passage upstream and downstream,
restoring threatened and endangered species, removing dam safety risks
and associated liability costs, saving taxpayer dollars, improving
aesthetics
of the river, improving recreational boating and fishing opportunities,
improving public access to the river, recreating “new” land
for parks or landowners, and improving riverside recreation and increasing
tourism.
Far less than one percent of all documented dams in the U.S. are even
under consideration for removal, and the percentage of power generation
and water storage capacity associated with these is equally miniscule.
The lesson learned from this is that river restoration and community
revitalization can be obtained without losing any significant amount
of the benefits that the nation’s dams provide.
It is equally important to note that not all dam removals are success
stories, and dams can be removed incorrectly. For example, the Fort
Edward Dam on the Hudson River in New York was removed in 1973 without
adequate testing and analysis of the sediments behind the dam. As a
result, tons of PCB-laden sediments were released downstream, hurting
wildlife and jeopardizing public health. This provides a valuable lesson
on the steps to take in order to minimize or eliminate negative impacts
from the removals.
Now that dam removal is no longer considered a fringe, radical approach
to river restoration, there will be significantly more opportunities
to use dam removal as a river restoration tool where appropriate. By
continuing the trend to selectively remove those dams that do not make
sense—those dams where costs outweigh benefits, that pose a public
safety hazard, or both—we can begin to restore the ecological,
safety, and economic benefits associated with free-flowing rivers.
Read the entire report at http://damremovaltoolkit.americanrivers.org.
For information contact: American Rivers at (202) 347-7550 or www.americanrivers.org,
Friends of the Earth at www.foe.org,
and Trout Unlimited at www.tu.org.
