Unleash the Rivers

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From California to Maine, dam removal has begun. When four small diversion dams were taken off a Sierra Nevada stream called Butte Creek, record numbers of spring-run Chinook salmon--listed by the U.S. as a threatened species--rushed past their ruins to spawn. If the spring-run Chinook ends up on the more serious endangered-species list, that will trigger more restrictions on diversions from its spawning rivers. So helping the spring-run by getting rid of a few dams could be worth billions to California's economy, which is hopelessly dependent on the manipulation of water.

Unfortunately, no simple solution is politically simple. There's usually fierce resistance from local stakeholders to any proposal to remove a dam, no matter how small. But it's striking how, in just two or three decades, the U.S. has gone from building dams to not building dams to taking some of them down. Under serious discussion is the demolition of four brutish structures on the lower Snake River that have macerated millions of young fish.

We now seem much more captivated by the magic of a salmon's returning to its birthplace to spawn than by the miracle that obsessed our forebears: making deserts bloom. How to replenish water-dependent nature while meeting the demands of water-dependent society is going to test our ingenuity and will. Let's hope they won't be overtaxed.

Reisner, who has just been named a Pew Marine Conservation Fellow, is the author of Cadillac Desert

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