Down go the Dams
A.
B. The author wants to inform us on the positive and negative effects of dams to the environment. The main purpose of a dam is to help stabilize floods, provide us with quality drinking water for irrigation, recreation, and even navigation systems. The removal of dams can have a great effect for our environment and us by possibly having cleaner water, dissolved oxygen levels will begin to raise resulting in a balance of temperature. Dams are both good and bad and even if we cannot have the removal of them, we can still make some adjustments to them to make them better for us and the environment.
C. I saw how the article had both benefits and negative effects of dams. A benefit is that it can enhance the location. This means that there would be an increase in tourism, economic benefit to the state that has control of the body of water that had a dam. Dams can potentially bring in money for our state. Removing dams would permit biodiversity to also increase. A con that was said in the article was that there could be the risk of flooding. I think we should listen to some of the ideas the author suggested and take them in action. We need to make sure that we make the right decision before we make it.
SO WHAT?
Dams have positive and negative sides to them so we need to make sure that we make right decisions when we want to remove them or not.
SAYS WHO?
Jane C. Marks
WHAT IF?
Dams were removed? Would the water be cleaner?
THIS REMINDS ME OF...?
A lot of things that could have positive and negative effect to them.
- 2001, however, the Fossil Creek generating stations were providing less than 0.1 percent of the state’s power supply
- Two years ago the plants were shut down, and an experiment began to unfold. In the summer of 2005 utility workers retired the dam and the flumes and in so doing restored most of the flow to the 22.5 kilometers of Fossil Creek riverbed that had not seen much water in nearly a century
- Trickles became waterfalls, and stagnant shallows became deep turquoise pools
- Dams control flooding, and their reservoirs provide a reliable supply of water for irrigation, drinking and recreation. Some serve to help navigation, by stabilizing flow
- Water clarity and oxygen levels increase as flows come back and aquatic insects thrive again.
- As water moves more freely, temperature falls and cold-loving fish return.
- People, in addition to flora and fauna return to enjoy the rivers.
- If sediments contain high level of pollutants, cost of removing them has to be weighed against the ability of the waterway to wash them away.
- If sediment load is very high and the river's flushing capacity low, engineers might opt to remove the dam in stages, allowing small amounts of sediment to be released at a time.
- Managers and scientists are using all available information about dam removal to make decisions
- Controversy about decommissioning arises.
- Local community wanted to preserve components of the generating station
- In recent years, as the downsides of dams have become more widely recognized, groups made up of several interested parties-utility officials, regulators, policymakers, conservationists, native peoples, researchers and the public-have fought to decommission aging dams
- People are trying to minimize negative results of removing dams
- 800,000 dams worldwide, 45,000 are large
- They intend to transport fine sediments from behind the dam through a slurry pipe to sites five to 11 kilometers
- Decommissioning dams (particularly small ones, as is the case in Fossil Creek) is becoming a regular occurrence as structures age, provide an inconsequential share of a region’s power, become unsafe or too costly to repair, or as communities decide they want their rivers wild and full of fish again
B. The author wants to inform us on the positive and negative effects of dams to the environment. The main purpose of a dam is to help stabilize floods, provide us with quality drinking water for irrigation, recreation, and even navigation systems. The removal of dams can have a great effect for our environment and us by possibly having cleaner water, dissolved oxygen levels will begin to raise resulting in a balance of temperature. Dams are both good and bad and even if we cannot have the removal of them, we can still make some adjustments to them to make them better for us and the environment.
C. I saw how the article had both benefits and negative effects of dams. A benefit is that it can enhance the location. This means that there would be an increase in tourism, economic benefit to the state that has control of the body of water that had a dam. Dams can potentially bring in money for our state. Removing dams would permit biodiversity to also increase. A con that was said in the article was that there could be the risk of flooding. I think we should listen to some of the ideas the author suggested and take them in action. We need to make sure that we make the right decision before we make it.
SO WHAT?
Dams have positive and negative sides to them so we need to make sure that we make right decisions when we want to remove them or not.
SAYS WHO?
Jane C. Marks
WHAT IF?
Dams were removed? Would the water be cleaner?
THIS REMINDS ME OF...?
A lot of things that could have positive and negative effect to them.