A movement to delete river dams
Over the past 100 years we have dammed or added locks on multiple streams and rivers for a variety of purposes including recreation, hydropower, irrigation, flood control, barge traffic, and water storage.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has cataloged at least 90,000 dams greater than six feet tall that are blocking rivers and streams. There are tens of thousands of additional small dams that fall through the cracks of our national inventory.
Today, “Remove That Dam or Lock” has become a watchword for people all over the country who want to remove unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary dams and locks. In 2021, according to conservation organization American Rivers, 57 dams were removed, reconnecting more than 2,131 miles of rivers.
Since 1912, over 2,000 dams have been taken down; American Rivers is highlighting 25 dam removals to watch for 2022. In Arkansas, partially breached Little Sugar Creek Dam in Bentonville is a target for removal in 2022. It was washed out several years back, and a group is trying to stop it from being rebuilt.
They point out that to rebuild the poorly constructed dam would take several million dollars. They want to clean up the debris from the partially destroyed dam and let Little Sugar Creek flow free.
Removing dams has tremendous benefits for a river’s health, public safety and climate resilience, according to a report released by American Rivers.
Leading the rush to remove dams are Vermont, Pennsylvania and Oregon with seven removals each and New Jersey with six.
Along with too many dams, the U.S. has hundreds that are oversized. In the 1950s-1970s we dammed thousands of streams and rivers. Many were totally unnecessary, and most were much larger than needed.
We stopped the creation of “Lake Buffalo,” but should have stopped many more ill-conceived projects, or at least reduced their size.
While dams can benefit society, they also cause considerable harm to rivers and streams. According to American Rivers, dams deplete fisheries, degraded river ecosystems, and alter recreational opportunities.
Many are now old, unsafe, or no longer serving their intended purposes. Although not all damage rivers in the same way, they prevent fish migration and access to spawning habitat.
Dams also change the rivers’ natural flow, which fish such as salmon and river herring depend on to guide them. They create stagnant reservoir pools, disorient migrating fish, and can significantly increase the duration of their migration.
They can trap sediment, burying rock river beds where fish spawn. Gravel, logs, and other food and habitat features can become trapped behind dams. Peaking hydropower operations can cause dramatic changes in reservoir water levels that can leave stretches below dams de-watered, and can lead to algae blooms and decreased oxygen levels.
Dams also decrease water temperatures by releasing cooled oxygen-deprived water from the reservoir bottom.
Arkansas has a number of large dams; most are commonly known as The Corps of Engineers Dinosaur Dams. We have many that have submerged thousands of acres of bottomland hardwood trees for very little benefit. If we analyze the amount of impounded water and submerged land, then consider benefits and negatives, wouldn’t a dam half the size have been sufficient? What are we going to do with that much impounded water? Build a pipeline to California?
We should consider the money wasted by putting navigational locks for barge traffic on a river such as the Ouachita, which is too small to be a navigable. If we had never put a navigational lock on the Ouachita River for barge traffic, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and maybe the river would today be a free-flowing twin to the Buffalo.
The Felsenthal lock on the Ouachita was installed to raise the river to the point where barges could move up the river as far as Camden. Since there hasn’t been barge traffic on the river for years, removing it would be beneficial to not only the ecosystem, but could restore a fishery and increase bottomland hardwood. The damage includes tremendous bank erosion, with thousands of trees toppling into the river.
The reduction of the lock would bring back former Wildcat Lake and Pete Wilson’s Slough, which would return this section of the river as the best fishery in the mid-South. This drop in water level would also allow the restoration of bottomland hardwood and stop the bank erosion. It would save approximately $9 million a year in dredging and cleanup.
There is no barge traffic on the Ouachita above Monroe, La., and never will be.
This is a message to the Corps of Engineers and to the Arkansas Waterways Commission: Give us back our river!
If you want to help, here are the emails: Cassandra.Caldwell@arkansas.gov and ouachita.black.river@usace.army.mil. A “Free the Ouachita! Remove the Locks!” bumper sticker is also available. Just send me your mailing address.