Death by a Thousand Dams
Tens of thousands of small barriers hamper fish recovery in the northeastern United States. But while the demolition of big dams out west gets the most attention, a similar revolution is revitalizing northeastern streams and rivers—one tiny dam at a time.
By Ben Goldfarb
September 22, 2026
Excerpt: "Since 1912, more than 2,300 dams have been purged from waterways in the United States, most in the last quarter-century. The dam-removal movement hit its apogee in 2024, when, by the accounting of the nonprofit American Rivers, 108 dam removals reconnected more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) of once-fragmented waterways. The year’s biggest and best publicized dam obliteration occurred on the Klamath River, where the dismantling of four aging hydroelectric dams opened more than 645 kilometers (400 miles) of spawning habitat in #California and #Oregon to #ChinookSalmon, who recolonized the watershed so rapidly that conservationists described the resurrection as 'magical.' Prior to the Klamath, the nation’s largest undamming took place on #WashingtonState ’s #ElwhaRiver, where two fish-blocking walls were obliterated on behalf of chinook, coho, steelhead, and other salmonids."
Read more:
https://biographic.com/death-by-a-thousand-dams/
#SolarPunkSunday #DamRemoval #NewEngland #NortheasternUS #RiverRestoration #FishRestoration #WaterIsLife #EnvironmentalRestoration #RestoringNature
