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by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer More than 171 people are missing and 26 have died after a Himalayan glacier burst occurred, sending a wall of water and rocks hurtling through a dam and two hydroelectric project sites in northern India. The flash floods have impacted 13 villages and about 2,500 people. While rescuers are hard at work clearing debris […]
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Four dams are set to be removed from the Klamath River, finally restoring salmon to the river after decades of population decline. Eight dams were built on the Klamath River between 1900 and 1962 to generate hydroelectric power, decimating the salmon populations and disrupting the ways of life of Native tribes throughout Northern California and […]
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A recent study published in Conservation Letters found that over 500 dams in planning stages or already constructed are located within protected areas. As Yale E360 reported this week, this study is significant in that it is the first to measure how many dams are being built in protected areas, including in national parks, nature reserves, indigenous areas, and more.
Why This Matters: As the article in Conservation Letters lays out, these protected areas are an “essential tool” in the conservation of freshwater biodiversity.
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The Edenville Dam failure in Michigan causing thousands to evacuate puts a spotlight on a problem that the American Society of Civil Engineers highlighted in 2017 when it gave our country a “D” for dam safety (yep – that’s it’s grade) but this grade has not significantly improved in the last 20 years.
Why This Matters: When we think about the security risks to our nation, we need to start counting infrastructure failure due to climate change as one of the most troubling.
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The removal of legacy dams, which were first constructed dozens to more than a hundred years ago, is proving to be increasingly popular to restore river flows now that they are no longer serving any purpose for generating power or driving industrial uses.
Why This Matters: There is no doubt that a free-flowing river is a healthy river. As has been much discussed recently, the need to do everything we can to restore and conserve the natural world to stave off the next wave of extinctions and to combat climate change.
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The results of a two-year investigation by the Associated Press (AP) were published this week and the findings were shocking — nearly 1,700 dams located in 44 states and Puerto Rico were rated as “high-hazard” dams that are in poor or unsatisfactory condition. Experts believe the actual number of risky dams is even higher — […]
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