Note: This story is intended to be listened to. Text associated below is simply a transcript of the audio but does include some visuals.
There’s this grainy black and white film from 1937. It’s called Boulder Dam: The Pictorial Record of Man’s Conquest of the Colorado River. Made by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, it opens with expansive views of rocky canyons and the cloudy river, not a human is in sight.
Narrator: For untold centuries, the turbid waters of the Colorado River battered their way through the forbidding canyons of its 1,700-mile course, traversing the arid Southwest, for the most part little known except to the native Indians and the few parties of intrepid explorers.
The film gives you the idea that the Colorado River is little more than a force to be controlled. You’d think it isn’t home to Indigenous tribes and a living ecosystem.
Narrator: In what had once been an uninhabited, waterless desert supporting only a sparse and inhospitable growth of chaparral and cactus, the beautiful little town of Boulder City was built within the short space of 15 months to house the army of 5,000 men to be employed.
In 1928, Congress gave authorization for the construction of a Colorado River dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada. The region’s tribes weren’t invited to the negotiations; their water rights were ignored. A couple decades later, Boulder Dam was given a new name: Hoover Dam.
The project was considered a huge engineering feat, touted as a symbol of progress even as it led to the destruction of a traditional Diné economy and way of life. By the mid-20th century, the U.S. led the world with the most number of dams that tried to control water for irrigation and flood control, and — at least some — to produce energy.
But dams aren’t just barriers restricting the movement of water; they have an impact on water chemistry, silt load and water temperature. They stop the movement and exchange of aquatic creatures, as well as the nutrients and sediments that make up entire ecosystems.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the average one is 57 years old and ready for retirement.
Narrator: We’ll tell you why they’re setting the Klamath River free and introduce you to the people who’ve been fighting for this for decades.
And as far as retirements go, the Klamath dams is monumental; All 100,000 cubic yards of concrete that currently restrict the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border will be completely dismantled by the end of the year.
It’s a win for tribal members, scientists, conservationists — and for locals. It’s a win for species, for the river itself, both upstream and downstream. It will take some time for native ecosystems to be restored.
I thought about the Klamath River recently as I sat alongside this little creek in Mount Lemmon, near Tucson, Arizona. Behind me, chunks of concrete lay next to part of a low wall that once dammed up the waterway as part of Sycamore Dam.
I’m at the top of Mount Lemmon, one of those sky islands here in southern Arizona. It’s U.S. Forest Service land and there’s quite a lot of water. … This was a rainy, long spring, longer than usual, and up here, you can see concrete ruins everywhere from when this was considered to be a good idea to dam up rivers and creeks. … And so, it’s refreshing to walk around here and see that nature has regained its own course, whether it’s destroyed those structures itself or it’s been left to be.
There are at least 90,000 dams across the U.S. blocking rivers and streams, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
But the good news: Just like the U.S. led the world in dam building, it can lead in dam removal. Almost 2,000 dams have been removed in the past century. The Klamath Dams is the biggest yet, a model for what’s to come: living, interconnected ecosystems, respect for cultural traditions and practices, restoration.
Original audio by Ruxandra Guidi, with additional audio from BBC Sound Effects, the National Archives and CBS Mornings.
“Encounters” is a serial column exploring life and landscape during the climate crisis. Ruxandra Guidi is a correspondent for High Country News. She writes from Tucson, Arizona. Follow her on LinkedIn.
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