Should Dams Be Removed Essay

Should Dams be Removed? Dams in the United States play very important roles in controlling the waterways and for transportation purposes, but is the destruction of the rivers and surrounding land worth it? Many of these dams do more harm than good to the rivers, and hundreds of dams in the United States are no longer even in use. Not only are they damaging the rivers, but these unused dams are also no longer providing any benefits for rivers or for human use. These unused dams should be removed and return the rivers to their natural state.
Along the water ways the U.S Army Corps has counted more than 80,000 dams over six feet tall throughout the country (American Rivers). Between 1950 and 1970 30,000 dams were placed (DamNation). The main focus was to build fast …show more content…
The law states that dams are supposed to have a designated area for fish to swim freely through; however, many did not have this (DamNation). An example is the Elwha dam, it had zero opening for the fish to migrate. When Elwha was finally torn down in 2011 thousands of salmon were seen trapped, they have been trapped there since the Elwha dam was originally built centuries ago (DamNation). If a dam does have opening for fish to swim through, the water has to be openly flowing outward. In many cases the water will not be openly flowing because that is a waste energy and money. This is a problem because it is common for adult fish to migrate downstream, if they cannot complete this journey for food they will die. In the year 1982 thousands of fish began their swim to Red Fish Lake in Idaho, only one made it past all 8 dams (DamNation). The amount of money spent to try to recover from this was roughly $9,000 per fish (DamNation). One solution to this problem was to load boats with the fish and take them downstream; however this is very costly and time consuming