Dam Removal:  Mother Nature & Those Pesky Citations

The Front Page: Bruce Steinberg

With Art Malm’s compelling story on dam removal (Click on: Carpentersville IL Fox River Dam Removal), I had to put my own dam pet peeve on paper. A June 27, 2024, letter to the editor in the Chicago Daily Herald claimed that the positives being said about the benefits of dam removal along the Fox River were false: Improved Water Quality, Restored Wildlife, and No Local Costs. All false. Instead, her claimed dire warnings were as follows:

• The impoundments behind the dams filter and biologically clean stormwater runoff and waste water treatment discharges from the entire watershed. Removal just sends pollution downstream.
• Removal of the impoundment will destroy acres of wetlands, home to a diverse and thriving habitat. Wetlands are crucial to the health of our ecosystem and per environmental requirements must be completely restored or re-created. The millions of plants in our shoreline wetlands absorb CO2 and reduce our carbon footprint.
• Removal will result in an estimated 25 — 50% reduction in river width, local communities will be responsible for moving storm system piping/drains to the new river boundaries; Moving/modifying the structures and components of water treatment facilities; miles of shoreline and wetland restoration; hazardous waste mitigation from decades of industrial waste dumping scoured up by the faster running river; and inspection/ reinforcement of structures that assumed common offsetting hydraulic balancing forces from river water levels in their analysis and design. [Editor’s Note: As to costs, there is no known claim being made by dam-removal proponents that there would be no costs; rather, that steep and forever-ongoing costs for inspections, maintenance, repair, and liabilities for these 100-plus-year-old dams would be eliminated.]

While God made rivers, do rivers thrive only when Man makes dams? And the citations offered for these dire dams done-in claims? None.



In my (former) 32-year lawyer career, any attorney making a claim without source citation got spanked by the judge (sometimes a fine), the no-citation claim disregarded. That’s a good rule for making claims, whether by an attorney, presidential candidate, social media poster, or letters to the editor.

Here’s one of many possible citations for the cost claim I made: Click on - Citation No.1. Here's my citation for the letter to the editor: Click on - Citation No. 2.

In the letter-writer’s defense, she did offer up the following example: Prior removals (check out Klamath River) have been disastrous and now they are coming for us.

You want to make your offered example your best, especially when Chicken-Littling “they” are coming for “us,” because people can check it out and then nod in your favor. As to the Klamath River, the first of four dam removals began in June 2023, with the final structures removed on August 28, 2024. Source: Citation No. 3.

Why the letter-writer would come to dire conclusions well before dam removal was completed and Mother Nature had time to do her thing remains an example of one of the frustrations dam-removal proponents have to deal with when educating the public.

Mr. Malm estimated that in two-to-three weeks following dam removal, greening of the newly uncovered land will begin. In two to three years, Mother Nature will have done her thing, creating/restoring fens, wetlands, and sandbars that will enhance water quality, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities. Even as the C’Ville dam was being removed, Malm counted egrets at the dam removal site, every day increasing in numbers, from a half dozen at the start of the work to over three dozen just a week later as the impoundment drained.

In Klamath River Restored, Dams Removed - YouTube, Citation No. 4 - you can see the Klamath Valley “mud flats” already covered with wildflowers and other native vegetation after only a couple of months. Only three weeks after the final dam structures were removed, ABC10 sent a camera crew for Bartell's Backroads (John Bartell) to report on river conditions. Check out - YouTube, Citation No. 5 - to see the native Karuk people already reporting their best quality salmon run in years. 

Dam removal naysayers will have to find another best-example disaster claim as the Klamath has already become a beautiful thing …

With citations.

CHECK OUT RELATED ARTICLE: Carpentersville IL Fox River Dam Removal