The Dam Dilemma

The Dispute
As China plans to construct the world's largest dam, pressure from U.S. environmental groups is leading to the removal of several dams in this country. What is the thinking behind each decision?

The pressure for dam removal in the U.S. stems from the environmental movement, which is concerned with the extinction of many species of animals and plants.

State and federal officials recently removed the Quaker Neck Dam on the Neuse River in North Carolina, making it one of the first large dams in the United States to be dismantled. The dam's removal served as an effort to rescue fisheries and renew the river. Approximately 75 miles of the stream and 90 miles of tributaries were opened up as a result of the tearing down of the dam.

Numerous other dams in the United States have been or are scheduled to be torn down in order to restore the original flow of rivers: the Edwards Dam in Maine, the Western Canal Dam on a tributary of California's Sacramento River, the Savage Rapids Dam on Oregon's Rogue River, and the Newport No. 11 Dam on Vermont's Clyde River.

The Benefits We Reap, and the Prices We Pay

Dams represent humans' ability to control nature and reap the benefits in doing so. They are major water management projects providing flood control, producing hydropower, and allowing farmers to irrigate (i.e. supply their dry land with water by artificial means). Dams also create a new body of water that people can use for recreational activities such as fishing, swimming, water skiing, and boating.

Hydroelectric dams generate electricity by channelling water through turbines in a power station below the dam. Power for thousands of homes and businesses is produced by the massive force of water spinning the turbines.

Hydropower is the most plentiful and efficient renewable energy resource. It contributes more than 90 percent of all renewable electric energy produced in the U.S. If all the energy produced by hydropower was produced by coal instead, pollutants from coal would increase by 16 percent, according to the United States Society on Dams (USSD).

These contributions are valuable, of course. A third of countries depend on hydropower for over half their electricity, and over a third of irrigated land depends on dams, according to a World Commission on Dams (WCD) report. Plus, much of the world's food is subsidized by cheap irrigation water provided by dams.

However, the overall costs of dams, to both humans and nature, have never before been considered. The WCD recently concluded that dams’ impacts on ecosystems are “mostly negative."

Dam construction comes at a heavy cost. The reservoir or lake created by a dam may cover many thousands of acres of forest that once served as habitat for wild animals and plants. Large dams have contributed to the extinction of many fish and other aquatic species, the disappearance of birds in floodplains, huge losses of forest, wetland, and farmland, and the erosion of coastal deltas.

In Augusta, Maine, the Edwards Dam is scheduled to be dismantled. Its removal will restore 17 miles of prime habitat for such species as the critically endangered short-nosed and Atlantic sturgeon, striped bass, shad, and alewife. The dam was in place for so long, though, that it is uncertain whether the Atlantic salmon runs upriver from the dam will ever be restored.

“We’re beginning to understand that we need to put the ecosystems back into the equation,” says Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project.

Dams around the World

Today, there are 20 countries building large dams. The International Commission of Irrigation (ICID) reports that there is a need to build large dams in countries like India, China, Japan, Spain, Turkey, and African and Latin American countries. Without building more dams, such countries face difficulties regarding the supply of grain, drinking water, power, and industry.

China has already built 20,000 of the world's 45,000 large dams and is planning to construct the world's largest dam yet, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River which is the world's third longest river. The dam will be constructed at the Zhongbao Islet near the village of Sandouping, an area that divides the eastern and western parts of the Xiling Gorge.

Chinese officials argue that their country will benefit from building the Three Gorges Dam. Officials hope that the dam will control destructive flooding and harness raw power. They say the mass amount of hydroelectric power produced will cut down significantly on pollution caused by the burning of coal.

Opponents argue that the dam (and other large ones like it) exact incalculable human costs, because people are displaced and archaeological treasures inundated. When China finishes its Three Gorges Dam in 2009, for example, the project will displace nearly 2 million people and flood an area with 1,208 known historic sites.

In Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, Patrick McCully, campaign director for International Rivers Network Campaign, estimates that 30 to 60 million people have been displaced by large dams. “The available evidence suggest very few of these people ever recover from the ordeal, either economically or psychologically,” he writes.

Large scale development of dams has ceased in the United States. However, in many developing countries around the world, it is the central governments that control all of the important decisions. In many cases, the positive impacts of dams are given priority and the negative impacts are ignored. That is the paradox in action here. Energy, industry, and recreation are obtained while species extinction, displacement of peoples, and destruction of ecosystems occurs as well.

This article was written by Gavin McDonagh, who recently graduated from Boston College with a history major and economics minor. Gavin is interning at Riverdeep for his second summer.

Learn More

• Learn more about the Three Gorges Dam by reading the Riverdeep Current story, "China’s Great Dam."
  
  
• The Riverdeep article, "An Upstream Battle" discusses how the tearing down of dams might positively affect the wild salmon population.
  
  
• Take a virtual field trip to China's great dam with Riverdeep's Three Gorges Dam Controversy Xcursion .
  

• Read the emagazine.com story, "Killing Them Softly," about how dams are harming India's white tiger population.