Cracked

The future of dams in a hot, chaotic world

 Cracked  is a speed date with the history of water control—the estimated 800,000 dams around the world and the politics and power that evolved with them.

Examples from the American West reveal that the costs of building and maintaining a sprawling water storage and delivery complex in an increasingly arid world made vulnerable to the ravages of climate chaos is well beyond the benefits. Success stories from the Patagonia region and the Blue Heart of Europe point to a possible future where rivers run free and the Earth restores itself.

Aerial view of the Hoover Dam with a large navy blue colored lake behind it. It appears prominently from the air among the surrounding canyons.

The time for action is now

Throughout human history, irrigation schemes and the formation of systems of government have had a symbiotic relationship. Any regime in any country that could harness water, especially where it was scarce, wielded an especially potent form of power—first over its environment, and later, over its people.

Aerial view of green agricultural lands next to a brown lifeless desert landscape. The edge appears prominently from the air among the surrounding topography.

The more complex the water system, the more centralized and concentrated seats of political and economic power tended to be. The regimes of antiquity tended to demonstrate, often in cruel and oppressive ways, the efficacy of centralized control, what might be identified in modern times as a combination of government authority, expertise, financing, and administration.

So whether you were conscripted into labor in late nineteenth-century Egypt, a fellah toiling alongside three hundred thousand others in the African sun on the Mahmoudiyah Canal, a slave hauling rock for the construction of the Roman aqueduct, or a Chinese peasant in the Han dynasty digging dikes and diversions to tame the Huang He River, the ultimate power and authority of the system under which you labored was as ugly, as hard, and as obvious as the callouses on your hands and feet. In pre-industrial times, water grew the glory of nations. Oligarchies ruled, built water storage and delivery systems, and generally made sure the benefits were delivered to them. America, high on the promises of the Enlightenment, in legal terms at least, set out to be different in this regard. But even the road to a well-watered hell is paved with good intentions.


A multitude of dams

There are over 91,000 dams across waterways in the United States. Some of these dams provide hydroelectric power, flood control, irrigation, or recreation opportunities.

Some dams are hundreds of feet tall and store billions of gallons of water, while others don't store any water and are less than six feet tall.

Dams across the country are aging and provide potential hazards to communities downstream. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, many dams have a high or significant hazard potential for downstream populations.

The map on the right shows each dam by their hazard potential (color) and the maximum water storage (size). Many of the dams with the highest risk store the most water.

Explore the data by clicking on the text below

dams are those where failure or mis-operation will probably cause loss of human life.

dams are often located in predominantly rural or agricultural areas but could be in areas with population and significant infrastructure.

dams are where failure or mis-operation results in no probable loss of human life and low economic and/or environmental losses. Losses are principally limited to the owner’s property.

dams are where hazard potential has not been designated or downstream hazard potential is restricted to approved government users.

Case study: Teton Dam

From Cracked:

The problem with larger dam catastrophes: the bigger the dam, the more destructive the flood. The collapse of Teton Dam near Rexburg, Idaho, was a peculiar mix of federal government agency hubris and a major miscalculation about the porous nature of soil in this part of the country.

On the morning of Saturday, June 3, 1976, clear water springs were discovered on the downstream face of the dam. By the morning of June 5, seeps were recorded staining the face on the north end of the dam. Two bulldoz­ers were deployed to try and plug the hole. Word went downstream that evacuations should commence.

Half an hour later, both bulldozers, after being abandoned by their drivers, were swallowed as embank­ments atop the dam on which the heavy equipment was riding gave way.

Most of Idaho Falls was spared, but upstream, the man-made flood killed eleven people. It did at least $400 million worth of damage in a weekend. Thirteen thousand cows drowned. The towns of Wilford, Sugar City, Salem, Hibbard, and Rexburg—a college town of ten thousand souls—were devastated.

Dwindling water supply and growing demand

From Cracked:

In late 2021, the elevation of Reservoir Mead dipped below 1,075 feet (above sea level), 40 percent of total capacity. (When full, the ele­vation of Mead is over twelve hundred feet. Since 1999, the last year it was close to full, the reservoir has lost 125 feet of water, lending it the white “bathtub” ring effect that continues to grow each year.)

As I write this, Mead—the largest reservoir in the United States, supplying water to twenty-five million people, has dropped to 1,067 feet, 35 percent of capacity. Another forty-five feet worth of drop and the delivery of hydropower is threatened. Another 120 feet below that, and Reservoir Mead is at “dead pool,” meaning all the services it was designed to provide will no longer be possible. And 250 miles upstream lies another reservoir, Powell, that is at less than a quarter of “full pool.”

The satellite map on the left shows Lake Mead in 2014 and the satellite map on the right is from 2022.

Restoring waterways

Across the country there are efforts underway to remove aging dams and restore rivers to enable fish passage. These efforts face numerous challenges including financial, community support, and political will. Even with these challenges coalitions of individuals are working together to capitalize on opportunities to remove dams and restore depleted ecosystems before it's too late.

Penobscot River Restoration Project, Maine

The Penobscot is the largest river in Maine and the second largest in New England. It drains 8,570 square miles—one quarter of the state—flowing from Penobscot Lake on the Maine/Canada border and also its tributaries on Mount Katahdin. In 2004, an agreement was reached to restore access for fish species to the formerly blocked off upstream habitat.

The Penobscot River Restoration Trust was formed by the Penobscot Nation, American Rivers, Atlantic Salmon Federation, Maine Audubon, Natural Resources Council of Maine, The Nature Conservancy, and Trout Unlimited to achieve the a common goal of restoring the Penobscot River watershed.

In 2012, the Great Works Dam was removed followed by the removal of the Veazie Dam the following year. In 2016, a river-like fish passage was constructed at Howland Dam. The whole project made 2,000 miles of historic spawning habitat available for species such as alewife, American shad, American eel, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sturgeon, Atlantic tomcod, blueback herring, rainbow smelt, sea lamprey, striped bass, and shortnose sturgeon.

This helped restore, in part, the subsistence fishery of tribal nations.

The native sea-run fish, like river herring and shad have already rebounded and are providing food for many fish-eating land and marine mammals and birds. Prior to dam removal almost no shad were in the upper river, after dam removal in 2017, 4,000 shad were counted at the fish lift at the Milford Dam along with 1.2 million river herring.

In 2018, more than 2.8 million river herring were counted in the Penobscot River watershed. Sea-run fish bring vital nutrients from the ocean inland.

Critical salmon habitat is now accessible because of these dam removal projects.

Elwha River, Washington

From Cracked:

What keeps John McMillan, former science director of Trout Unlimited’s Wild Steelhead Initiative, hopeful and inspired is the rapid recovery of Elwha habitat, and the growing number of signs that fish and the whole array of creatures who depend on them are making a comeback.

Below the surface, a salmon almost grazes the stony riverbed, swimming in water approximately three feet deep.

Steelhead, his favorite salmonid, have become a leading indicator that recovery continues apace. The Elwha Basin is not noted for its abundance of summer steelhead, but as McMillan notes, that is likely because of the dams. Seeing them meant believing—if the habitat becomes available, salmon will return—and steelhead will probably be the first to get there. “All we need now is better marine [ocean] survival,” says McMillan. “Assuming ocean conditions rebound, I think that we’ll see the salmon and steelhead do the same. That could take ten years, it could take forty. The ultimate goal is to have all-natural reproduction, but each species is different. For steelhead, they appear to be doing relatively well amongst the species.

The Elwha river is located in the northwest corner of in Washington.

There are two dams on it that prevent sea-run fish like steelhead from spawning upstream.

In 2014 the dam removal process was completed, restoring hundreds of miles of fish habitat.

The Elwha River Watershed is on its way to recovery allowing fish to return to their native spawning habitat. Roll your cursor over the fish on the left to see where they can now go.

An areal view of turquoise, free-flowing, waters surrounded by brown sandy banks and forested river mountains.

Vjosa River, Albania

Experience

Answer with action

From Cracked:

There is opportunity in calamity, another fact British journalist George Monbiot had well in mind when he described what kinds of actions are not only desirable, but necessary in this window of opportunity. Of political as well as biological fortunes, Monbiot observes, “Things can change quickly. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Softer aims may be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic.”

The pace and scale of freeing rivers not only in the United States, but around the world, ought to increase exponentially. The good that is done will be done in just the nick of time. We’ll have to fly by the seats of our pants—keeping in our back pockets something like the advice that Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave during a cabinet meeting as the country seemed to be falling apart. “Try something,” FDR said. “And if that doesn’t work, try something else.

Vjosa River, Albania