Dam removals are bringing fish back across the northeastern United States

A rewilding organization bought some forest land, downstream from a dam, that used to get seasonal flooding before the dam was built and made an agreement with the dam operators to do artificial seasonal flooding via ditches they dug. The flooded forest has the effect of providing fish nurseries so hatchlings have a chance to hide and grow before the water recedes and they have to return to the river.

https://youtu.be/qcVMX32c0io

I think it's a testament that human activity and nature don't have to be all or nothing, but we need to consider and mitigate the impact of our actions and always leave space for nature.

More good news: after years of fighting, Brookfield Renewable agreed to sell four dams on the Kennebec River which will let Atlantic Salmon go back up river to their spawning territory. This just happened in 2025 and could be a bigger breakthrough than the massive alewife restoration that the article mentions.

My understanding is that the first few victories on this were very very hard but it seems to have created a precedent and a growing example emulated across the country.

https://themainemonitor.org/dams-sale-salmon-return-kennebec...

This sounded familiar and then I realized I had read the same article a few weeks ago. This is some strange syndication I would propose changing the link to this one: https://biographic.com/death-by-a-thousand-dams/ it’s also way better layout and fewer ads.

Good for the fish but as winters get warmer these dams will be useful to store rain that doesn't stay put in the mountains as winter snow. This might mean more summer droughts. Also a nice clean source of power. I would rather see fish ladders.

Dams and hydro are renewable energy. But they sure ain’t “clean” energy.

To add a bit of a negative: dam removal has far less success in salmon restoration. The Elwha dam removal resulted in no native salmon runs. All the salmon in Elwha are still raised in hatcheries (they have clipped fins, so that's easy to track).

The biggest success so far was in the Klamath River watershed.

Small dams, hydropwer and fish can co exist, though there is a loss in 'efficiency' in extracting the free power embodyed in flowing water. Undershot wheels need to be relativly large and also leave room for fish to swim underneath them, but thats it, the wheel turns, the fish swim on by. The real problem are 'mid sized' hydropower turbines which cut of many large water sheds to fish migration, and I have been involved with water protectors in various ongoing attempts to remediate or remove varios dams and 'water control' aperatus, and the push back from entrenched intrests is rabid, anti everything but wealth and privlage, and the 'legal rights' to water sheds underpins many an unearned fortune, and perfectly illustrate the very ancient concept of Hydraulic Despotism.

> Many NOOMBYs consider local dams indispensable ties to their community’s past; in Billerica, some town officials have objected to the demolition of the Talbot Mills Dam on the grounds that “it has long served as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution” that remains “unquestionably one of the major focal points in the area.”

I used to hate the "but what about historical site upstream?" argument often used against dams. The prioritisation of a few tombs and piles of stone over what would improve the lives of thousands to tens of millions living now. It's kinda ironic seeing the same asinine argument being used from the other side...

That said, reducing dams to just hydroelectric generation is probably going to skew the narrative to the wrong direction.

But also less energy created by dams means energy is now likely offset by energy generated by greenhouse gases.

That’s great until your land floods

  > In Plymouth, Massachusetts, a former dam has been converted to a bridge that lets fish pass unimpeded beneath it

That's a hell of an ugly bridge!

They tried to make it look "natural" with the rock tiles but there's absolutely nothing natural about it.

A plain concrete bridge would have been less of an eyesore.