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by GongOfFour 1643 days ago
There are 84,000 dams in the United States. More than one a day since we became a country. Most of them don't generate any meaningful electricity, but they do disrupt habitat for many native fish species.

I would like to see them all destroyed. We can find electricity elsewhere.

2 comments

electricity is not the only reason we dam rivers, millions of acres of agriculture is irrigated via damning and diverting rivers
I guess irrigation can be "damning" to rivers :)

Jokes aside, everything's a tradeoff and while flood control / irrigation is helpful to farmers, it can also introduce a resiliency problem in quake zones, since a dam breakage can cause devastating floods. Actually, it doesn't even have to be an earthquake. Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam_crisis

Which is why emerging precision fermentation technologies for starches and proteins are very important so that land used for agriculture can be rewilded.
And flood control
July 4, 1776 - December 17, 2021 => 89,650 days

Off, but really not by much.