On First Glance

In the desperate fight to contain climate change before it overwhelms us, some environmentalists have had second thoughts about their age-old antipathy toward hydroelectric dams. Yes, dams famously destroy rivers and valleys, obliterate wildlife habitat and displace entire populations &#; frequently indigenous peoples with no place to go. But they&#;re carbon-free, right? If the world is going to get to &#;net-zero&#; emissions by , the goal set in the Paris Agreement, we will need a diverse portfolio of renewable energy sources, even those that bring more than their share of collateral damage.

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Not so fast, say other conservationists; hydroelectricity can hardly be considered green at all. Along with destroying vast habitat, dams require enormous quantities of concrete and steel to construct, themselves major contributors to carbon emissions. Worse yet, it turns out that the reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams in the tropics emit significant amounts of methane (think swamp gas), which is 21 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.

The battle over hydropower looks quite different in the United States than in much of the rest of the world because there are no large dams in the works in the lower 48 and just one advancing in Alaska. With no new construction to oppose, anti-dammers have focused on removal. They have been quite successful; according to American Rivers, an environmental advocacy group, 1,199 dams have been removed in the United States since . The year with the most dam removals was , with 99 removed, followed closely by , with 91. Most of these dams, it should be noted, were small and did not contain hydroelectric turbines. But the movement&#;s greatest success story to date was the elimination of two huge dams on the Elwha River in western Washington State in , both of which were still producing electricity.

Efforts continue to remove power dams on the lower Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River) &#; the one immortalized in Woody Guthrie&#;s song about the Grand Coolie Dam. Guthrie&#;s song was &#;Roll On Columbia.&#; Like the Elwha dams, the Snake River dams are implicated in the decimation of the local Chinook salmon population. Chinook are vital to parts of the economy of the Pacific Northwest, not to mention to the culture of indigenous people &#; and the only food of the regional Orca population, which had dwindled to just 73 animals as of August . The litigation surrounding these dams is now in its third decade.

Hence the dichotomy is stark. Construction of new hydroelectric dams has halted and even reversed in the United States, while construction continues across Europe and is even more evident in the developing world. The mega-dam projects under way outside Europe are often championed by the construction arms of large multinational corporations and the foreign bondholders who put up the cash to build them. Payoffs to corrupt regimes, staggering debts bequeathed to national governments and wholesale habitat devastation are just costs of doing business.

Disadvantages of Dams

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Dams are essential for storing and providing sufficient water to the population. Dams are required to fulfil water demand in agriculture, industries and domestic usage. Generating hydroelectric power is one of the most important purposes of building a dam. Other than fulfilling our daily needs, they are also important as a tourist spot and also provide a site for fishing, boating and other recreational activities. Dams play a significant role in reducing or preventing floods. Dams are a lifeline when there is water scarcity or in case of drought.

Also read: List of Largest Dams in India

Disadvantages of Building a Dam

There are numerous advantages of building a dam and that is the reason why a government invests so much money in the construction and maintenance of Dams. But there are certain disadvantages related to it. Some of the disadvantages are:

• • Building a dam is very expensive, and the government needs to ensure that strict guidelines are followed and a very high standard is maintained.
  • They must operate for many years in order to become profitable enough to compensate for the high building cost.
  • People residing in villages and towns in the nearby area, where there are chances of flooding, have to be relocated. They lose their businesses and farms.
  • Sometimes people are removed forcibly to set up hydro-power plants and it poses a serious ethical concern.
  • The building of large dams can cause serious changes to the earth&#;s surface and lead to geological damage. It can trigger frequent earthquakes, however, modern planning and design of dams have reduced the possibility of occurrence of certain disasters.

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