Thousands of dams that have been built across the United States, most of which are not in use anymore but which are stopping the flow of water and inhibiting the spawning of fish and other water-life are being destroyed.
During 2014, around 72 dams were either torn down or blown up, a move which has restored approximately 1175 kilometres of waterways from California to Pennsylvania.
In a landmark agreement between the United States and Mexico, the gates of the Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border were lifted to allow a “pulse flow” of water to flow into the final stretch of the Colorado River in March 2014. This was done in an attempt to restore a currently arid landscape that used to support a rich diversity of life.
According to Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project and a National Geographic Freshwater Fellow, “The pulse flow is about mimicking the way the Colorado River flowed in the springtime, thanks to snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains, before all the dams were built.”
Dams like the Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon had diverted so much water by the early 1960s that there was minimal water flowing into the lower Colorado, leaving very little water for the indigenous people or wildlife in the delta. It is hoped that the pulse-flow will help restore around 113 kilometres of the river’s course, including freshwater marshes and 2,300 acres of floodplain in a region that once boasted 2 million acres of wetlands which comprised one of the planet’s greatest desert aquatic ecosystems.
Around 865 dams have been removed over the past 20 years, many of them small local dams such as the White Clay Creek dam, only 8 feet tall, and built to run a flour mill, but they can stop fish and create water scarcity just a well as larger dams can.
Is this going to be a trend that will spread to the rest of the globe? One can only hope that it is, so that those who live in water-scarce regions can also have access to life-sustaining water and a better life for all.
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