Over the previous 100 years we’ve dammed or added locks on a number of streams and rivers for a wide range of functions together with recreation, hydropower, irrigation, flood management, barge visitors, and water storage.
The U.S. Military Corps of Engineers has cataloged at the least 90,000 dams better than six ft tall which might be blocking rivers and streams. There are tens of hundreds of extra small dams that fall by means of the cracks of our nationwide stock.
At the moment, “Take away That Dam or Lock” has grow to be a watchword for folks all around the nation who wish to take away unneeded, undesirable, and pointless dams and locks. In 2021, based on conservation group American Rivers, 57 dams had been eliminated, reconnecting greater than 2,131 miles of rivers.
Since 1912, over 2,000 dams have been taken down; American Rivers is highlighting 25 dam removals to observe for 2022. In Arkansas, partially breached Little Sugar Creek Dam in Bentonville is a goal for removing in 2022. It was washed out a number of years again, and a bunch is attempting to cease it from being rebuilt.
They level out that to rebuild the poorly constructed dam would take a number of million {dollars}. They wish to clear up the particles from the partially destroyed dam and let Little Sugar Creek circulation free.
Eradicating dams has great advantages for a river’s well being, public security and local weather resilience, based on a report launched by American Rivers.
Main the push to take away dams are Vermont, Pennsylvania and Oregon with seven removals every and New Jersey with six.
Together with too many dams, the U.S. has a whole bunch which might be outsized. Within the Nineteen Fifties-Seventies we dammed hundreds of streams and rivers. Many had been completely pointless, and most had been a lot bigger than wanted.
We stopped the creation of “Lake Buffalo,” however ought to have stopped many extra ill-conceived tasks, or at the least lowered their dimension.
Whereas dams can profit society, additionally they trigger appreciable hurt to rivers and streams. In line with American Rivers, dams deplete fisheries, degraded river ecosystems, and alter leisure alternatives.
Many at the moment are previous, unsafe, or not serving their supposed functions. Though not all injury rivers in the identical approach, they forestall fish migration and entry to spawning habitat.
Dams additionally change the rivers’ pure circulation, which fish akin to salmon and river herring rely on to information them. They create stagnant reservoir swimming pools, disorient migrating fish, and may considerably enhance the period of their migration.
They will entice sediment, burying rock river beds the place fish spawn. Gravel, logs, and different meals and habitat options can grow to be trapped behind dams. Peaking hydropower operations may cause dramatic adjustments in reservoir water ranges that may go away stretches beneath dams de-watered, and may result in algae blooms and decreased oxygen ranges.
Dams additionally lower water temperatures by releasing cooled oxygen-deprived water from the reservoir backside.
Arkansas has numerous giant dams; most are generally often known as The Corps of Engineers Dinosaur Dams. We’ve many who have submerged hundreds of acres of bottomland hardwood timber for little or no profit. If we analyze the quantity of impounded water and submerged land, then think about advantages and negatives, would not a dam half the dimensions have been adequate? What are we going to do with that a lot impounded water? Construct a pipeline to California?
We must always think about the cash wasted by placing navigational locks for barge visitors on a river such because the Ouachita, which is simply too small to be a navigable. If we had by no means put a navigational lock on the Ouachita River for barge visitors, we might have saved a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, and possibly the river would right this moment be a free-flowing twin to the Buffalo.
The Felsenthal lock on the Ouachita was put in to lift the river to the purpose the place barges may transfer up the river so far as Camden. Since there hasn’t been barge visitors on the river for years, eradicating it could be useful to not solely the ecosystem, however may restore a fishery and enhance bottomland hardwood. The injury contains great financial institution erosion, with hundreds of timber toppling into the river.
The discount of the lock would convey again former Wildcat Lake and Pete Wilson’s Slough, which might return this part of the river as the most effective fishery within the mid-South. This drop in water degree would additionally enable the restoration of bottomland hardwood and cease the financial institution erosion. It could save roughly $9 million a 12 months in dredging and cleanup.
There is no such thing as a barge visitors on the Ouachita above Monroe, La., and by no means can be.
It is a message to the Corps of Engineers and to the Arkansas Waterways Fee: Give us again our river!
If you wish to assist, listed below are the emails: [email protected] and [email protected] A “Free the Ouachita! Take away the Locks!” bumper sticker can also be obtainable. Simply ship me your mailing tackle.
Electronic mail Richard Mason at [email protected]
