Natural World

Paul Greenberg has a modest proposal:

Throughout the United States, there are tens of thousands of dams that today serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Most of them were built on streams and rivers during the Industrial Revolution, providing mechanical hydropower to textile mills and other private manufacturers, primarily in the Northeast. But as manufacturing moved away from New England during the 20th century, many of the companies that built and maintained these dams went bankrupt. Unfortunately, when they closed up shop they left their stream barriers in place.

While these dams were once a way of building up the American economy, today they represent a tremendous force pulling it down. Dams, even when they no longer serve industry, continue to do one pernicious thing very effectively: block the passage of fish to and from the sea.

And salmon represent just a tiny percentage of the sea-run, or “diadromous,” fish that could be recovered should non-power-producing dams be removed. Principal to river ecosystems are shad, eels, alewives, and other smaller fish that yearly make the run either from salt to fresh or fresh to salt. These “forage” fish are the short-term credit of marine ecology. Practically everything eats them, from delicious white-fleshed striped bass to tasty summer flounder to thousand-pound bluefin tuna. Remove them from the ecosystem, and you are depriving the fish we love most of their best source of protein. Return them, and you have the potential to increase the biotic wealth of the ocean profoundly. Imagine the value to the American economy of a fisheries sector producing surpluses rather than running deficits.