Decommissioning and removal of dams has become an increasingly common response to problems associated with dam infrastructure management, river conservation, and fisheries populations. However, little attention has been paid to the ecological and economic costs of dam removal. As a result, some removals have caused occasional but significant occurrences of released toxins or nutrients, channel instability, downstream sediment impacts, changes to invasive population distributions, and adverse hydrologic alterations, including open-water and ice-affected flooding. |
Description of Research