We ask Congress and the Biden administration to support a strong River Budget ahead of the President’s Budget and the Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations process.

Our federal agencies require the tools, resources, capacity, and technical assistance to maximize funding efficiencies and improve effectiveness. Today, we need prolonged and sustained investments to remove dangerous dams, restore floodplains, and protect vital habitat for fish and wildlife. The Fiscal Year 2025 River Budget outlines our commitment to advance federal priorities overseen by the Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. The federal spending priorities also take proactive measures to
curb water pollution and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Key priorities in the Fiscal Year 2025 River Budget:

Promote climate-smart agriculture: Climate change poses an existential threat to agricultural producers, landowners, and farmers, whose livelihoods rely on healthy rivers. In partnership with farmers and ranchers, we can build up resilience and regenerate ecosystems to improve irrigation, bolster agriculture, and improve croplands’ ability to capture and store carbon.

Enhance water infrastructure: More than two-thirds of our drinking water supply comes from rivers. America’s network of water systems provides communities with safe, reliable, and affordable clean water. Every dollar invested in water infrastructure generates $2.20 in economic activity. Advancements in nature-based solutions can begin to tackle aging or deteriorating pipelines in communities with the greatest needs.

Protect watersheds: Every person in our country lives within a watershed comprising an intricate system of rivers, lakes, and smaller streams. Healthy watersheds clean our drinking water supplies, support recreation like fishing and hunting, and stabilize soils. In 2022, outdoor recreation generated $1.1 trillion in economic output and 5 million jobs, accounting for 2.2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Improve flood management: Today, nearly 41 million people live in flood-prone areas. Inland and coastal communities, particularly in disadvantaged and rural areas, need relief as environmental pressures and natural disasters, including hurricanes and floods, threaten people and property. Investments in flood management solutions can safeguard rivers and protect vulnerable homeowners and businesses.

Remove and rehabilitate dams: Dams disrupt the natural ecosystem by impacting water quality, cutting off migration routes, isolating habitats, and destroying fish spawning grounds. Some dams pose significant and serious public safety risks to people and surrounding communities. Prioritizing funding to remove, rehabilitate, and/or retrofit dams is the best way to bring life back to damaged rivers and protect communities. The annual appropriations process charges Congress to work with the White House to focus federal investments on priorities that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Now more than ever, we need to continue to sustain and support key federal programs that improve rivers across America, deliver economic benefits, and improve agency programs that are responsible for and responsive to our communities’ needs.

We urge Congress and the Biden administration to support a strong River Budget as we prepare for the release of the President’s Budget and the Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations process.

For questions, contact:
Jaime D. Sigaran, Associate Director, Policy, and Government Relations
jsigaran@americanrivers.org
Ted Illston, Vice President, Policy and Government Relations
tillston@americanrivers.org

American Rivers and the Hydropower Reform Coalition are proud to present the Practitioner’s Guide to Hydropower Dam Removal. This is a comprehensive guide for dam owners and practitioners on removing hydropower dams regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Removing dams is a common practice and a good option for dam owners or licensees who determine that the expense of ownership is too great relative to the benefits provided by their dams. 

While most hydropower dams continue to serve an important purpose by generating power, many – both publicly and privately owned – have reached the end of their useful life. Those dams can pose public safety risks, impact fish and other aquatic life, and become costly liabilities to their owners. Many are not profitable or require costly repairs and upgrades that push dam owners and licensees to consider removal.  

Did you know? 

• 46 FERC-regulated hydropower dams have been removed in the U.S. This is fewer than 3% of all dam removals. 
• Most hydropower dam removals are initiated by dam owners and stakeholders during the relicensing process. 
• A 2020 survey of hydropower licensees found that 30% of dam owners are considering decommissioning and removal instead of relicensing their projects. 
• Economics is the primary reason that licensees and dam owners are choosing to remove their projects. 
• 1,243 dams have failed or required emergency action to prevent failure. Dam removals can be permanent solutions to dam safety. 

The guide covers the complex issues of license surrender, decommissioning, and dam removal processes for hydropower dams. In addition, the guide has twenty-one case studies on selected projects to inform future hydropower dam removals. 

American Rivers staff, the Hydropower Reform Coalition Steering Committee, and external partners contributed to this document. 

For additional information on dam removal, visit https://www.americanrivers.org/river-restoration-training-resources/

For additional information on hydropower reform and the licensing process, visit https://hydroreform.org/  or  https://www.river-management.org/hydropower-licensing-101

LTPBR projects involve the use of simple, temporary, hand-built wood and rock structures that mimic natural beaver structures, acting as speed bumps that capture sediments to aggrade the stream. LTPBR approaches are substantially less expensive than form-based stream restoration approaches that employ heavy equipment. 

Research and monitoring on LTPBR pilot projects have found a number of environmental and ecosystem service benefits. Benefits of LTPBR projects include:

• Drought and flood resilience: Studies indicate that healthy natural stream systems and restored headwater floodplains and wetlands recharge local aquifers. Reconnected floodplains enable infiltration of runoff into soils and wetlands, providing natural storage during spring runoff that can be slowly released to streams during the summer months. Healthy connected floodplains also help delay downstream flood peaks.
• Wildfire resilience: A 2020 study of large western US wildfires found that riparian vegetation around beaver complexes had a three times greater rate of survival than around stream segments without beavers.
• Improved habitat: By enhancing wetlands, LTPBR and beaver dams enhance important terrestrial habitat, and have also been shown to enhance fisheries
• Reduced Sedimentation: A study in England monitored 13 beaver ponds built from beavers re-introduced to a controlled 4.5-acre site. They determined that over the four years of monitoring the beaver ponds trapped on average 7.8 tons of sediment, totaling 101.5 tons. The authors concluded beaver ponds may help mitigate the downstream impacts of erosion and nonpoint source pollution.
• Increased water quality: Beaver dams have been shown to retain sediment and nutrients, as well as heavy metals, reducing downstream pollution levels.
• Increased forage: A 2018 study of LTPBR projects in Colorado, Oregon and Nevada showed that the projects increased vegetation productivity and extended it longer into the year. The authors noted that increased soil moisture due to the projects enabled vegetation to keep growing well during periods of low precipitation.

Research conducted for the report found ample evidence for many benefits from LTPBR. However, additional research is needed to better understand the hydrologic effects of LTPBR projects and beavers, including their potential to increase late-season flows and increase evaporation and water use by wetland vegetation. Existing research on the hydrologic effects has found the following:

• Key factors influencing the degree of LTPBR and beaver impacts on late-season flows include the extent of floodplain inundation and the length of time the inundation is sustained, as well as the porosity of structures.
• In regard to the potential for LTPBR to cause higher late-season flows and lower flows when a LTPBR project is first installed, one review found that small LTPBR projects tend not to have observable effects on streamflow, while larger projects can attenuate runoff and increase baseflows.
• A 2020 Montana study found that three years after the installation of a LTPBR project, the riparian vegetation had increased by ~25%, which resulted in a 0.7gpm increase in ET per structure. This small amount of decreased flow (0.0015cfs) was well below an amount that could be detected by a stream gage

Despite the documented benefits and low cost of LTPBR projects, challenges are impeding scaling up these projects. The social barriers to LTPBR and beavers are the largest challenges to solve. These include the potential impacts to human infrastructure from beaver dams, such as road and irrigation infrastructure flooding. This has stimulated the development of numerous solutions for preventing beaver from blocking water conveyances and ensuring sufficient water passage through beaver dams to prevent flooding problems. Additionally, more research is needed to understand the hydrologic effects of LTPBR projects and beaver complexes, including potential benefits to late-season flows and potential water rights impacts that can be avoided or mitigated. Demonstration projects in different types of stream systems and elevations are needed to provide more scientific understanding of these effects. Consulting with local stakeholders prior to developing an LTPBR project, carefully choosing location and project design, and ensuring compliance with any permitting requirements, can help overcome these challenges and enhance the chances for project success.

This report was written for American Rivers by Jackie Corday with Corday Natural Resource Consulting. 

AN ASSESSMENT OF DEMAND FOR FLOODPLAIN EASEMENTS IN THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN

In the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB), demand for flood assistant is very high, but these programs do not receive consistent, annual funding. Many years, Congress makes no funds available in the UMRB for flood damage reduction projects of any kind, despite the recurring costs of damages from flood and excess rain/moisture. The cost of damages from flood and excess rain/moisture ranks second only to drought in the UMRB, and these damages are escalating due to climate change.

Across the nation, flooding has caused $59.2 billion (CPI-adjusted) in damages over the last decade. Over that same period, farmers enrolled in the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) reported $29 billion in damages (CPI-adjusted) caused by floods and excess moisture, with the UMRB states representing 34 percent of those damages. The cost of flooding impacts on the nation and in the UMRB is rising as precipitation increases, and damages are expected to continue to escalate as climate-change impacts intensify.

Despite the significant and escalating amount of flood damage to crops on a regular basis, the EWPP and WFPO are only sporadically funded in the UMRB. Between 2011 and 2020, the USDA only invested $267 million (CPI-adjusted) into these two flood damage-reduction programs in the UMRB, while agricultural flood and excess rain/moisture damages exceeded $8 billion (CPI-adjusted).

In addition to saving farmers and taxpayers money, enrolling more acres in floodplain easements, and investing more in USDA flood risk reduction programs to plan floodplain easement and restoration would

1. Promote resilient local economies by investing in floodplain projects that are rich in ecosystem services,
2. Increase options for farmers to enroll acres that are routinely damaged by floods into a conservation program,
3. Increase flood water storage in areas that are seeing significant rises in flood damages,
4. Reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Mississippi River by using floodplain restoration as a downstream water filtration tool,
5. Prevent and slow the extinction of freshwater and floodplain-dependent species that are more at risk than marine and terrestrial species,
6. Expand the use permanent easements that reduce long-term federal obligations, and
7. Meet farmer demands for a more functional floodplain easement program.

The USDA Floodplain Easement Program needs to be reformed to enroll easement acres annually and make more substantial investments in flood damage reduction. To do this, Congress needs to include the following reforms in the 2023 Farm Bill

1. Fund flood damage reduction and floodplain easement programs annually through USDA – Natural Resources Conservation Service.
2. Establish a tracking and reporting system for floodplain easements within the Conservation Effects Assessment Project.
3. Order USDA to collaborate with economic experts to better understand and quantify the ecosystem services provided by functional floodplains.
4. Ensure floodplain easements are not subject to land-tenure requirements.
5. Order USDA to collaborate with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to prioritize investments in areas subject to recurring flood damages.
6. Order USDA to develop Best Management Practices to reduce flood damages in the agricultural sector.
7. Order USDA to improve guidance on floodplain restoration to meet multiple natural resource challenges.

Removal of the Lower Snake River dams could have a significant benefit or a minimal negative impact on carbon emissions from grain transportation

The Grain Transportation Study released on July 8, 2022 by Dr. Miguel Jaller shows that carbon emissions see only a minimal decrease or increase if the lower Snake River dams are removed. While these findings may seem surprising, they are consistent with the one other study that focused directly on this question (Casavant and Bell, 2001). 

Using one set of emissions factors, the new model showed a decrease in CO2 emissions of 9.14%. Using another, the model showed a slight increase of 1.37%.

1. The Jaller study includes an estimate of current truck miles
2. The Jaller study used the most recent publicly available emissions factors from studies that included truck, rail, and barge emissions, while a previous study appears to have used data that are over 40 years old.  
3. Rail is increasingly efficient
4. This conclusion is well-supported by credible, independent studies

This study, commissioned by the Water Foundation and American Rivers, estimates the carbon emissions and other air pollution generated when transporting grain across the Pacific Northwest under two scenarios: current emissions and the emissions generated should the four Lower Snake River dams be breached. This study by Dr. Miguel Jaller adds to the body of research on the lower Snake River dams and is a data point that shows dam removal should have relatively little impact on carbon emissions as grain transportation shifts away from barges.

Read the summary here

Ellerbe Creek Green Infrastructure Partnership: A NEW APPROACH TO RESTORING DURHAM’S STREAMS AND RIVERS

Our urban landscapes were not designed historically with the idea of protecting and restoring our natural environment. Weaving green stormwater infrastructure into an existing landscape can have significant benefits for both the human and natural communities by reducing flooding, improving water quality, reducing heat island affect, creating better access to green spaces, and many more! This report looks at the possibilities for using green stormwater infrastructure in a highly urbanized part of Durham, NC in the Ellerbe Creek watershed.

The most densely developed areas of the City and County were built along and on top of the headwaters of Ellerbe creek. The creek receives almost half of all the stormwater runoff from the city creating a huge problem for Ellerbe creek. The Durham State of Our Streams Report lists numerous pollutants in the creek that are directly related to excess stormwater runoff. Ellerbe Creek has been on the list of North Carolina’s most polluted water bodies since 1998 and stormwater pollution makes the creek nearly uninhabitable for aquatic life and at times dangerous for people.

Ellerbe Creek is the dirtiest stream in the Falls Lake Reservoir Watershed. High levels of nitrogen and phosphorous contribute to the current pollution problem in Falls Lake causing algae blooms and elevated bacteria levels leading to human health hazards, fish kills, drinking water contamination, and closed recreational beaches in the reservoir. Clean-up goals for the reservoir are in place and call for a 40% reduction in nitrogen and a 77% reduction in phosphorus. To restore clean water to the creek, the City of Durham will need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars using traditional stormwater management practices. This report shows a new innovative and cost effective approach to address these problems relying on integrating green infrastructure (e.g. rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavement) into the city’s urban landscape to absorb and filter polluted stormwater and slowly release the cleaned, cooled water into the creek to restore its health and make it a more valuable resource for the community.

The River Budget outlines clear priorities for federal spending to improve water infrastructure, restore watersheds, modernize flood management and remove dams to ensure a future of clean water and healthy rivers everywhere, for everyone. These priorities are critical. Because healthy, resilient river systems are the first line of defense against potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Because finding equitable solutions to river and water challenges is key to dismantling longstanding environmental injustices. 

Because rivers are pathways to the outdoors and connect us with nature and each other.Because everyone has a right to clean, safe water and healthy rivers.

By investing in the programs outlined in the River Budget, Congress can drive smart, equitable solutions that will benefit our nation for generations to come.