Comment by m_herrlich
2 hours ago
Good for the fish but as winters get warmer these dams will be useful to store rain that doesn't stay put in the mountains as winter snow. This might mean more summer droughts. Also a nice clean source of power. I would rather see fish ladders.
You actually want to restore the river to be more resilient as the earth warms, fish returning empowers many other parts of a river ecosystem.
Install dedicated water tanks to store water, evaporation rates are much less.
> You actually want to restore the river to be more resilient as the earth warms, fish returning empowers many other parts of a river ecosystem.
Dams can make rivers more resilient.
Yes and no. Most of the dam removals are 100-200yo old low head damns that fed mill ponds so they weren't really holding anything back when there was high demand.
Thaaaaaat said, moving from "slap up a damn somewhere" based stormwater management to local stormwater management is probably gonna go down in history as one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of environmentalism in the wet eastern half of the country (the desert west where aquifer replenishment is a concern is a different story)
At this point there isn’t much additional space you could dam without adverse impacts. The flood barriers for New York at the mouth to the Atlantic were rejected both for being too costly and for screwing everyone outside the dams.