For many years dams have provided Americans a multitude of benefits from containing our nation’s rivers. However, the older these dams get the more problems arise. Water quality concerns, depletion of natural life, and damn safety are becoming hot topics in today’s conversations. Tragedies like the Flint Water Crisis and the near collapse of the Buckeye Lake Dam in Hebron, Ohio are only a couple examples of the harm dams possess. Dam removal is a practice that is gaining more support recently and is a superior alternative to create better water quality and help the natural river life recover once again.
Introduction With growing water temperatures, water quality disasters, plunging natural life levels, and mass algae blooms effecting…show more content… Dams that hold large bodies of water and prevent the natural steady flow aid the process of water toxicity. Large bodies of water that dams hold back become slow moving or stagnant which decrease the amount of dissolve oxygen in the water (Snyder) and also raise temperatures (Sullivan). These effects can/will make the water unsuitable for fish and other animal that live in the river/lake habitat. The low dissolved oxygen levels cause by the dam also are dangerous to wildlife downstream of dams. When the water containing extremely low DO levels is released from the dams, fish can be stressed or killed by a large influx of “suffocating” water (American…show more content… This Google search, “Dam Removal Information”, lead to the discovery of the American Rivers organization website and a news article about natural life recovery post dam removal. I then knew I wanted to focus on the results of current and past dam removal projects and their effects on natural health. I then moved on to OSU library database search using the key words “dam removal Ohio” and checking the “Peer Review Only” box. This search did provide me a resource regarding the 5th Avenue dam removal, but seemed to be too narrow. I refined my search by replacing the keywords with “dam removal United States” and found many peer reviewed sources about many dam removal projects across the
