Building dams has been the basic, brute force way to control natural flows of water since at least 3,000 BCE. Many now think that humanitarian and environmental hazards caused by the construction of dams tend to outweigh the benefits. No such doubts attached themselves to the celebrated Hoover Dam project, on the border of Nevada and Arizona. This Great Depression era initiative to create jobs, produce hydroelectric power and provide water for irrigation nevertheless caused 100 worker casualties and, once completed in 1936, seriously messed up the ecosystem of the Colorado River Delta. These figures are chicken feed, though, compared to the fallout of the Three Gorges Dam spanning the Chinese Yangtze River, which, by its completion in 2010, had displaced approximately 1.3 million people, wrecked the surrounding environment with floods and landslides, and destroyed archaeological heritage sites. Three Gorges created the biggest power station in the world, but one has to ask whether the classic trade-off scenario still stacks up – or should we perhaps just damn dams? I (ew)
Photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior - Bureau of Reclamation.
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