travelnutz wrote:
Dog Folks,
Many of the 84,000 dams in this country are not needed and should go or have been removed already. That alone would lower the needed "repair" costs significantly.
They have taken out several dams in Northern Michigan over the last couple years alone and now they a going to put the free flowing "rapids" on the big wide 287 mile long Grand River back in downtown Grand Rapids as those several local area dams are going to be removed finally. It flooded bad again last spring in downtown behind the 10' to 15' dams as the water held back was almost 20 feet deeper than it would have been without the dams. Michigan already has over 11,000 natural larger than 3 acre lakes and over 3200 miles of Great Lakes shoreline so dam formed lakes are so un-needed here. Years ago, people in our state seemed to be "dam nuts" and are finally coming to their senses. The biggest thing the dams did was fill behind them with settling mud runoff and screw up the natural fish habitats. DUH!
Out west etc, the dams may do a much better job of controlling rivers but not in our state. Mother nature is so much smarter and doesn't need repairing or suffer from aging!
I agree with you in principal, except for hydro power generation.
Also, removal of said dams will not be cheap either and could very possibly be much more costly than repair.
Failure of any of these dams will be very costly in terms of life and money.
