Dams in Every District: Challenges, Opportunities, and What’s Ahead

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and American Rivers held a briefing to learn about the state of dam infrastructure in the United States. Rivers across the United States are dotted with dams built for various purposes, from powering factories to irrigating croplands. In fact, there are more than 500,000 dams across the country. Of the dams in the National Inventory, 85 percent have outlived their expected lifespan and many are no longer serving a purpose. This presents a critical challenge for dam owners, municipalities, states, the federal government, and industry as they seek to ensure community safety. 

This briefing discussed the options dam owners have to manage this infrastructure challenge, including dam removal, which is a common approach to dam safety and river restoration. Dam owners frequently seek help with removing their obsolete and unsafe structures, and dam removals are only completed with dam owner consent. To date, dam owners have worked with federal agencies and nonprofits to remove 2,119 dams, the majority of them in the last 25 years. 

Panelists discussed the need to pay attention to dams as key infrastructure--including dams that provide carbon-free electricity to 30 million Americans--that has an impact in districts across the country. Bringing together perspectives from federal agencies, local leaders, and the hydropower industry, the briefing highlighted funding, programs, and projects that advance public safety through dam removal as well as river restoration.

Highlights

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Through a process called the Uncommon Dialogue, the hydropower industry, conservation groups, tribes, and government agencies identified common ground on how to manage the country’s dam infrastructure. The dialogue identified three Rs: removal, rehabilitation, and retrofit. Removal refers to taking out dams that have outlived their usefulness. Rehabilitation is the option to update unsafe dams that still serve a useful purpose. And a retrofit adds hydropower capacity to dams to increase energy production and storage. There are over 500,000 dams in the United States. Only 20-30% of these dams currently serve a purpose like flood control, irrigation, or hydropower. Many dams are abandoned or outdated. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated over $2.4 billion to support dam removal efforts.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) both coordinate interagency efforts to address dam safety and dam removal for public safety and habitat connectivity. FEMA leads the Interagency Committee on Dam Safety and the National Dam Safety Review Board. USFWS runs the Interagency Fish Passage Task Force.

 

Rep. Ann Kuster, Representative (D-N.H.)

• Through a process called the Uncommon Dialogue, the hydropower industry, conservation groups, and government agencies identified common ground on how to manage the country’s dam infrastructure. The dialogue identified three Rs: removal, rehabilitation, and retrofit.
• Removal refers to taking out dams that have outlived their usefulness. Rehabilitation is the option to update unsafe dams that still serve a useful purpose. And a retrofit adds hydropower capacity to dams to increase energy production and storage.
• There are more than 4,000 dams in New Hampshire, and their average age is nearly 100 years old. Dams are an ancient technology that has powered different industries and protected communities from flooding for years. Dams have many positive attributes, but are still aging infrastructure that must be addressed.
• Members of Congress are working on a bipartisan basis on hydropower legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

 

Tom Kiernan, President and CEO, American Rivers

• American Rivers, the National Hydropower Association, tribal leaders, and other traditionally “warring parties” have come together around the three Rs to create a framework to manage the country’s dams.
• The country needs to invest in dams, whether for removal, rehabilitation, or retrofits.
• There are at least 533,429 dams throughout the United States. Only 20-30% of these dams currently serve a purpose like flood control, irrigation, or hydropower. Many dams are abandoned, outdated, and not serving their original purpose.
• The best way to restore the health, dynamics, and natural systems of a river is removing its dams. More than 2,100 dams have been removed in the United States to date.
• An example of a dam removal project American Rivers has worked on is the Bloede Dam on the Patapsco River in Maryland. The dam posed a safety hazard to the surrounding community. Taking this dam down removed the hazard and reconnected 65 miles of freshwater habitat.
• The removal of four dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon is the largest ecological restoration project in the history of the United States. Tribes, California, Oregon, and the owners of the dams came together in negotiations to reach agreement and all jointly funded the removal.
• Not all dams need to be taken down. Many need to be rehabilitated for safety and retrofitted for improved hydropower production. The benefits of dam removal vary based on the dam and the river.
• Dam removal benefits anadromous fish, which are born in rivers, migrate to the ocean to live for some time, and then return to the freshwater ecosystem to spawn. Removing dams allows anadromous fish, like salmon, and the tribes that depend on them to thrive.
• Dam removal has other benefits such as risk mitigation, tribal rights, recreation opportunities, and increasing jobs.
• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (P.L. 117-58) allocated over $2.4 billion to support dam removal efforts.

 

Malcolm Woolf, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Hydropower Association

• Not all dams are serving their intended purpose, but some dams are contributing hydropower to the renewable energy grid, which provides power to about 30 million Americans, and is responsible for 30% of America’s renewable energy.
• Hydro is currently responsible for 96% of U.S. commercial electricity storage capacity. This storage capacity, now at about 22 gigawatts (GW), is critical to transition to a 100% clean energy grid. Pumped storage also contributes to making the grid more resilient.
• There is significant potential to use existing infrastructure for pumped storage projects. Currently, there are 96 hydropower pumped storage projects in the pipeline that would contribute a capacity of 91 GW. Most of these projects will not be built, but any contribution of long-duration storage to the grid creates a multiplier effect for other sources of renewable energy.
• There are currently 100 GW of hydropower on the grid, but about half of the non-federal hydropower infrastructure is up for relicensing. This represents about 17 GW of energy from 459 facilities that need relicensing in the next decade. Licensing takes seven and a half years on average and costs millions of dollars. The federal fleet, not included in these numbers, is facing a similar problem.
• About one third of dam owners that need to relicense consider decommissioning their dams instead, as it can be cheaper and easier. Decommissioning does not remove the dam, it only turns the power off.
• The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) (P.L. 117-169) offers tax credits to build new carbon-free energy facilities or maintain nuclear facilities. Hydropower received no tax credits for maintaining facilities, which further encourages decommissioning. Many groups are working together to remedy the antiquated licensing process and address market design failures.
• Removal is best for some dams when the dam owner agrees and it is no longer serving a useful purpose.

 

Kayed Lakhia, Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Dam Safety Program

• FEMA’s mission is to help people before, during, and after disasters. The National Dam Safety Program’s intention is to ensure that actions are in place to prevent disasters.
• FEMA leads the Interagency Committee on Dam Safety and the National Dam Safety Review Board, and works to communicate with the public about dams, promote National Dam Safety Awareness Day, and advertise national campaigns.
• The American Society of Civil Engineers has given the country’s dams a D grade. The United States has suffered over 1,300 dam failures, 80% of which have occurred in the last 20 years as infrastructure ages. The estimated cost to rehabilitate dams nationally is nearly $158 billion.
• FEMA also provides technical assistance and releases and updates publications related to dam safety.
• The agency runs two grant programs to advance dam safety. The State Assistance Grant program ensures states undertake periodic dam safety assessments and other similar activities. The High Hazard Potential Dam program provides grants to states completing projects related to the three Rs.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and FEMA have begun to work together on projects like a dam removal in Wellsville, Ohio. Such collaboration is important as it keeps multiple missions in mind and increases coordination.

 

Siva Sundaresan, Deputy Director, United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or the Service)

• USFWS looks at dam removal through the lens of ecological connectivity, which has broad benefits for people and habitats.
• USFWS has worked on fish habitat connectivity since 1999 through the National Fish Passage Program. In the last 20 years, the Service has opened 64,000 miles of river, removed 3,500 barriers, and worked alongside 2,000 partners. The IIJA added an additional $200 million over five years for this program.
• Within the last three years, USFWS has distributed $143 million to communities for 122 projects. When completed, these projects will remove 346 barriers to open 12,272 miles and 924,622 acres of river and floodplain habitats. Of these barriers, 80 are dams, and, in cases where they cannot be removed, they are retrofitted with fish passages.
• USFWS works closely with partners during the entire timeline of a project. Before a project can even begin, there is significant work that goes into the design of the project, grant applications, permitting logistics, changes to infrastructure, and building general awareness of and support for the project.
• In the most recent application process for the fish passage program, USFWS allocated about $70 million. The Service received requests that totaled $575 million. Entities that apply to this program are typically ready to break ground on the project once they receive funding, so there is significant demand and many places would take on a project tomorrow if they had adequate funding.
• Through the IIJA, Congress asked the USFWS to create a federal Interagency Fish Passage Task Force. Thirteen agencies receive funding through the law for fish passage, so they are collaborating in new ways to make sure the funding is dispersed strategically and used in a transformative way.
• The task force compiled a list of ready-to-go, three- to five-year-long projects that would cost between $30-$50 million each and that a single agency could not complete alone. The final compiled list would cost almost $2 billion to complete.
• Communities benefit from fish connectivity in several ways, specifically through new job opportunities and other economic benefits that ecological connectivity can provide. The importance of connectivity extends well beyond fish.

 

David Gould, Director, Department of Marine and Environmental Affairs, Town of Plymouth, Massachusetts

• Dam removal can result in ecological, resilience, public safety, and financial benefits for a municipality.
• Ecological drivers are a key reason for dam removal, but there are tremendous benefits that come out of connectivity that extend beyond aquatic wildlife. Dam removal comes with a host of community benefits like improved water quality.
• Dam removal can increase community resilience by causing municipalities to update bridges and culverts so that they are more equipped to handle major storm events that are becoming more common. They are also safer for vehicles to drive over.
• Municipalities are required to inspect and maintain dams, even if they do not serve a purpose anymore. Removing dams can save cities time and money.
• Cities and towns need help doing these dam removal projects due to their cost. Municipalities can be creative, but cost sharing with state and federal entities is critical to getting large infrastructure projects completed.
• Since 2001, five dams have been removed from Town Brook in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The one dam that does remain is in the process of being removed. The Town of Plymouth participated in a cost-sharing project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and USFWS to install four new bridges and culverts. One way that Plymouth is measuring the success of the dam removals is by studying the herring runs in the river. The annual run grew from 30,000 fish with the dams to 234,000 fish once the dams were removed.
• To date, Plymouth has removed a total of 13 dams. It has also replaced seven bridges and culverts, opened up thousands of linear feet of new water and sewer lines, improved water quality, and established more resilient streams for fish, terrestrial wildlife, and people.

 

Avi Garbow, President, Resources Legacy Fund

• There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dams that have no remaining purpose. Dam removal, focused on unproductive dams, has happened because there is an agreement among an extraordinarily wide range of people that they should be taken down.
• All dam removal is local. Dam removal stories come from ranchers, community members, water districts, and tribes that have served as the clarion call for dam removal across the country.
• Federal infrastructure funding is important to create a pipeline of viable projects that allow organizations like the Open River Fund, American Rivers, and others to partner with communities and leverage funds for infrastructure improvement.
• There is much more to be done across the country to address aging dam infrastructure. Continued funding, specifically in the early stages of identifying and designing projects, can help make progress.
• Dam removal is transformational for the river shed, the surrounding communities, property owners, and for generations to come.

 

Q&A

 

Q: What can be done to help facilitate the collaboration between river stakeholders, government agencies, and tribes to advance dam safety and dam removal work? 

Kiernan

• Focusing on the three Rs of removal, rehabilitation, and retrofit can be helpful guideposts. It is also important to consider dam infrastructure holistically and think about how to improve and fund hydropower, dam safety, and dam removal all at once.

Woolf

• Fewer than 100 dams are removed annually out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dams.
• Organizations have historically focused on removing power dams as opposed to non-powered dams because there is a regulatory process to engage in with power dams that makes it easier to fight for their removal.
• The questions we need to ask are how can we create additional carbon-free power by using non-powered dams, and how can we remove unnecessary dam infrastructure?

Lakhia

• FEMA does not own or operate any dams. The money that went to FEMA from IIJA for dam safety is for states to take advantage of.

Sundaresan

• IIJA allowed the USFWS to work with other agencies in ways the Service never had before. This funding needs to continue for agencies and their partners to make progress.
• Investing in places that previously received little or no funding is important. Agencies are trying to help communities access the money they have.

Gould

• Changing the regulatory nature of dam removal by scaling back some of the permitting processes would be beneficial as it would save time, money, and resources.
• Cities and towns must work with federal agencies beyond funding because they also offer technical assistance throughout a project. Municipalities working more closely with agencies could make a nationwide impact.

 

Q: What resources are available for states and local governments to get started on dam removal? 

Kiernan

• All dam projects require a suite of funding, and there are a whole host of opportunities outside of federal funding. Many state governments have relevant agencies that can supply funding or expertise, as can organizations like American Rivers, community funds, or philanthropic organizations.
• To begin a dam removal project, groups often need seed funding to determine if the project is feasible and to create a project plan.

Sundaresan

• The Interagency Fish Passage Task Force has a portal with funding opportunities from all the different federal agencies that received any kind of fish passage-related funding through IIJA.
• USFWS program funding tends to be relatively flexible and can fund a variety of projects for different entities.

Lakhia

• States sometimes encounter difficulties in applying for funding, so FEMA is working to streamline grant applications to avoiding furthering inequities.
• One funding prerequisite is that applying entities must have an emergency action plan in place, which involves doing downstream inundation mapping. FEMA funds the Decision Support System for Water Infrastructural Security Web (DSS-WISE), a free program to help communities conduct downstream inundation mapping that, for 90% of communities, only takes 75 minutes.

Woolf

• Piecing dam removal projects together is harder than it should be. Currently there is proposed bipartisan and bicameral legislation—the Maintaining and Enhancing Hydroelectricity and River Restoration Act of 2023 (H.R.6653/S.2994)—that would create a 30% tax credit for environmental improvements, dam safety improvements, and removal of river obstructions and dams.

Gould

• Dam removal projects can now be completed with two or three funding sources, which is a significant improvement as more funding is available for cities, towns, and nonprofit organizations. Dam removal will continue to be a challenge but has improved dramatically over the last two decades.

 

Q: How do you put economic value on removing dams and how do you monitor the removal afterwards—especially regarding contentious projects?

Lakhia

• FEMA does not require a cost-benefit analysis, but does require a state to prioritize which dams would be best for rehabilitation. There are always more dams requiring attention than funding can support.
• Monitoring is more difficult to address. Grants often have monitoring periods, but there needs to be better mechanisms in place to ensure monitoring continues after those grant-required periods are over.

Kiernan

• This country has removed more than 2,100, dams which has given organizations and the private sector ample experience. There is no longer a need to prove dam removal is effective.

Sundaresan

• USFWS monitors surrounding habitats and economists conduct cost-benefit analyses. The Service is looking at the most holistic and effective way to monitor the impacts of dam removal beyond just habitat acres.

Gould

• To prove dam removal is effective, Plymouth has done post-project monitoring.
• The town has tagged fish and knows that with dams with fish ladders in place, 25% of fish are passing through. But when the entire dam is removed, 96% of fish can pass through. There is also artificial intelligence technology that records the stream to count how many fish are present.

Woolf

• Dam removal projects that are controversial are projects where there is a debate around whether the dam is useful. It is difficult to evaluate the costs and benefits of dams and their removal, especially because less-tangible values like cultural value can be hard to monetize.

 

Compiled by Kylie Tugend and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.

 

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