Dam removal practitioners across the country are continuing to break down river barriers— 65 dams were removed across the country in 2022, reconnecting more than 430 upstream river miles across 20 states.  

We look forward to a year in which dams are reported to be removed in all 50 states! In the meantime, we celebrate the return of river health and resilience for these projects completed in 2022.  

You might be wondering— has Pennsylvania been unseated as the leader in dam removals? Not yet! BUT! It was not the top state in 2022— Ohio is coming for you, Pennsylvania! 

The top states for dam removals in 2022 were:  

• Ohio (11 removals) 
• Pennsylvania (10 removals) 
• Virginia (6 removals) 

Across the country, dam removal practitioners have removed at least 2,025 dams since 1912. We are just getting started, everyone. Obsolete and dilapidated dams abound across the nation. We believe at least 30,000 dams (out of more than 400,000) can be removed to revitalize streams and bring rivers back to life. After all, life depends on rivers. My life, your life, your children’s lives, even your dog’s. We are counting on our community of dam removal enthusiasts, supporters, and even those who did not realize dams could impair streams to join with us.  

In the meantime, the hard workers below illustrate just a sampling of the great work done in 2022 to remove dams across the U.S. 

Walton’s Mill Dam Removal, Temple Stream, Maine— The Atlantic Salmon Federation and partners collaborated with local residents on the decision to remove Walton’s Mill Dam. The plan included rebuilding the adjacent community park and replacing several upstream undersized road stream crossings. The watershed-wide effort will restore more than 54 miles of productive cold-water habitat for wild Atlantic salmon and other native fish. The project is part of a broader effort over the past several decades to restore endangered Atlantic salmon and other sea-run fish to the Kennebec River, an effort ignited by the successful removal of Edwards Dam in 1999. 

Barren River Lock and Dam No. 1, Barren River, Kentucky— This project was part of a broader effort to remove dams along the Green and Barren rivers in Kentucky. A dam was originally built at this site in 1841 and expanded in 1933 for commercial use. It ceased operation in 1965 after Green River Lock and Dam 4 failed and navigation on the Barren River was no longer possible. Since then, the structure sat unused and deteriorated, creating a pooled condition in the river with lower oxygen levels, more sediment, and higher temperatures— conditions that are detrimental to aquatic life and the overall health of the river. The dam was also a barrier to boat traffic and a potential public safety hazard. All of these issues were addressed when the dam was removed by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service construction team. 

Burrells Place Dam, Unnamed tributary to Pigpen Branch, South Carolina—  Located in the headwaters of the Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River, the U.S. Forest Service, Naturaland Trust, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed this earthen dam in the Andrew Pickens Ranger District of Sumter National Forest. This project reconnected habitat for one of the last remaining populations of native Southern Appalachian brook trout. This project is part of a broader effort to remove obsolete dams on U.S. Forest Service land. Wilson Creek Dam in George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia were also removed in 2022. 

One More Thing!! 

The largest river and salmon restoration project in history will begin this year on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, with the removal of four dams. This effort on the Klamath is the result of decades of leadership and advocacy from the Karuk, Yurok, Klamath and other tribes, and will restore salmon runs, improve water quality, and revitalize cultural connections and food sovereignty. 

For now, check out our map and database on dam removals across the country here, and our summary of 2022 projects here. 

You’ll be hearing more from us in 2023 on dam removal, so stay tuned! 

With the substantial amount of snow that has fallen across the Colorado River basin over the past couple of months, I have been asked many questions about the state of the drought, and whether all this precipitation will reverse the severe declines in both Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Will all this snow “save” the Colorado River basin from further declines and cutbacks? Can we all just go back to normal now and not worry about conservation so much?

Spoiler alert – Not likely.

Certainly, all this snow will help quench the basin’s immediate thirst.  It may also serve to have much of the basin delay confronting what has been shaping up to be a real emergency, with real consequences for everyone who relies on the Colorado River – but not for long. If we experience another low snowpack year which has been predicted, the situation from the top of the basin to Mexico will be pretty dire – and if this recent snow funnel turns off, it still could be. But for now, it appears that, while the current snow conditions will certainly not save the day, they might help side-step having to immediately endure worst-case scenarios beginning as early as this spring, which hopefully can provide the states and Federal government some space to come together and bring the rest of the Colorado River community along in support of workable solutions for the basin by the end of the summer.

Through my role with American Rivers, I am honored to be one of the two Environmental Representatives on the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCD-AMP) Technical Work Group (TWG) which is intimately involved with much of the science conducted in the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell. As part of that role, how Glen Canyon Dam operates and is managed is of central consideration, and the impacts of decisions around how water flows through the dam are of critical importance to the ecological, recreational, and cultural values of the Grand Canyon and the overall natural heritage it provides.

Last week, at a meeting in Phoenix, we got detailed readouts around the hydrologic conditions in the Upper Basin of the Colorado River (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico make up the Upper Basin) and so far, the data looks positive for this current water year.

All those purple and blue blobs are great news and something to cheer about. These numbers all play into how the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the Federal agency that oversees and manages the federal infrastructure for the Colorado River system, forecasts likely water supply scenarios in different areas of the basin. But for the time being, let’s stick with Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.

The chart above may look confusing but bear with me. The vertical axis is the elevation of the water stored behind Glen Canyon Dam in Lake Powell. The horizontal axis is time, looking ahead across the next two years. Modeling experts at BOR run dozens of simulations based on 30-year average hydrology, current snowpack conditions, soil moisture, projected meteorology, and water use estimates to identify potential probabilities around how much water may be coming through the system, including how much water may reasonably be expected to flow into Lake Powell in a given year. Then, understanding these “inflows” projections in combination with other resource considerations, the BOR projects the volume and timing of water to be released out of Lake Powell, through the Grand Canyon, and into Lake Mead on an annual basis.

If you look carefully at the chart above, you will see three dotted lines undulating from left to right. Those three lines are the “Minimum, Maximum, and Most” probable storage scenarios for Lake Powell based on different inflow and other inputs (Maximum being the top, a blue line which reflects where 90% of the scenarios will land at or below in storage elevation, meaning the maximum probable amount of water to be stored at Lake Powell for the relevant year; Minimum being the bottom, red line which reflects where 10% of the scenarios will land or fall below in storage elevation, meaning the minimum probable amount of water to be stored at Lake Powell for the relevant year; and, Most being the middle, green line, which reflects that 50% of the scenarios are likely to be at or below in Lake Powell storage elevations for the year.  Each of these projections is based on CURRENT conditions and is subject to change as we learn more about actual, as opposed to modeled, conditions in the basin.

As you can see, the line trends down from now until about mid-April 2023, then makes a sharp curve upwards. This represents spring runoff – it is current, frozen snow (very low runoff in the rivers) transitioning into spring (lots of snowpack melting and the rivers flowing vigorously.) Then as we get into summer and fall, things more or less flatten out as the snowpack depletes and levels in Lake Powell stabilize.

The most important line on the chart above (at least for this blog) is the bottom line (Minimum Probable,) and, in particular, the April 2024 timeframe, the lowest point on the chart. Below that lowest point is a grey dashed line marked “Minimum Power Pool – 3,490ft.” This represents the elevation where Lake Powell can no longer produce any hydropower electricity because the water has fallen too low to turn the turbines.

Just a couple of months ago, it looked like Lake Powell may fall below that Minimum Power Pool elevation sometime around the April 2024 timeframe, and if this winter’s snowpack was dismal, the threat to the minimum power pool could be much higher much sooner. Last fall, BOR Commissioner Touton instructed that the Basin must come up with an additional 2- and 4-million-acre feet of Colorado River water to avoid critical threats to infrastructure and the system between now and the time new long-term operating criteria can be finalized (est. 2026). This directive, along with several other factors, also inspired BOR to consider partially modifying the current operating criteria through a process called a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

A SEIS is, in essence, a comprehensive study around some options that could guide operations at the Glen Canyon Dam and other facilities to forestall threats to the health, safety, and continuing functionality of the system until more comprehensive management plans can be assessed and considered.  Short-term adjustments to system operations will likely consider, among other things, the release of less water (and potentially MUCH less water) from Lake Powell in the current and next years with the assumption that storage at Lake Powell could continue to decline. That study is in process, but we all need to continue to press the urgency of this situation and find every way possible to reduce the consumption of Colorado River water, from every user across the entire basin. Just because the snowpack looks good today, doesn’t reduce the immediate need to find a way to live within the means that the river can provide starting now.

Now, some caveats to all this optimism. First, it could stop snowing, like it did last year, and this trend of piles of happy snow could go away. Second, the basin overall is in a serious water deficit across nearly all reservoirs in the Upper Basin.  BOR has had to release a lot of water over the past two years under emergency and drought contingency actions, including the implementation of a Drought Response Operations Agreement to try to keep Lake Powell from falling even farther and even faster. Lastly, runoff matters, and the combination of how soon spring arrives and how warm it gets, combined with how moist the soil is as that snow begins to melt will dictate how much water makes its journey down the river. With the solid monsoon seasons over the past two summers, the soil moisture is much better than it was a couple of years ago.  But dry soils absorb water as the snow melts, and if the soils are too dry, runoff water never makes it to the rivers in the first place. In fact, many believe that relying on the 30-year average hydrology conditions in the basin as part of the modeling foundation leads to potentially overly optimistic results in storage conditions. 

So, there is cause for optimism, and cause for skepticism, but at least at this point in early 2023, things are looking as good as they likely could to provide a little room to keep working toward collaborative solutions than in years past. Keep those snow dances coming!

When I’m asked what it means to be a woman in science, I immediately pause and look at the question from a more fundamental level: what does it mean to be a person in science? 

For my entire childhood and adolescence, I only had one image of a scientist: a man in a lab coat with a microscope, hunched over a world reduced to energy and particles. I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising: my dad was a chemist and spent his entire career working in labs, trying to make people’s lives better by looking for new ways to treat cancer. My mother is also a scientist: a biochemist who was routinely assigned the task of writing up other men’s research, rather than being invited to participate in the fundamental work of discovery herself. 

This is not an inspiring picture. 

It wasn’t until I had graduated college (with an English degree) that I caught a glimpse of a different path. At 21, I experienced a lot of firsts: my first camping trip. My first rafting trip. My first multi-day rafting trip. On a six-day rafting trip on the Middle Fork Salmon River in Idaho, I felt a visceral connection to the world that I had never experienced before. I felt that I belonged, that I had value. My mind was blown and my world would never be the same again. 

I knew I wanted to understand and protect rivers. By talking with countless people who generously shared their knowledge, I learned about field science: learning about the environment through direct, outdoor experience. Combing field science with my love for rivers has led me to a day-to-day life filled with curiosity about the places I’m trying to protect or the people who live in them, and the wonder of discovery when I learn something new. Being a scientist also means choosing a life of humility: approaching my work every day with only one certainty: I don’t know everything. Acknowledging that truth liberates me to recognize and set aside my preconceptions and biases, opening myself to new ideas.  

I’ve been fortunate to work with and be mentored by brilliant, funny female scientists. Dr. Sarah Null at Utah State University was my gateway scientist through her research about removing Hetch Hetchy and restoring the Tuolumne River. Dr. Rachel Johnson is a role model of an applied field researcher who guides federal policy on river management for salmon recovery, and also mentors and collaborates with a diverse community. I am inspired by people like Dr. Kathy Sullivan, the first person to walk in space and reach the deepest known spot in the ocean.  And I admire women like those featured in the documentary “Picture A Scientist”, who courageously speak up against the pervasive abuse and marginalization woman experience as they try to make the world a better place by nurturing their own curiosity and passion for discovery. 

My hope for the future of women in science is simple: that more women pursue field science, and that the existing science community works hard to make that space diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just. I also hope that we make women who pursue field science more visible, normalizing their presence in a space that’s historically been male-dominated, to illustrate a more diverse picture of who scientists are. I hope that women who pursue river science feel inspired to use it as a platform to advocate for the places we love and that have become integral to our identities. Finally, I hope that through their river science, women also learn to embrace the gift of their individuality by emulating rivers. In the words of Maya Angelou, “A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.”