This summer’s unprecedented floods across the U.S. highlight how a massive piece of infrastructure — the nation’s 90,000-plus dams — can play the role of hero or villain in these climate-enhanced calamities. … [I]n 2017, 200,000 people were evacuated downstream of California’s massive Oroville Dam when flood waters, combined with design and construction weaknesses, resulted in a $1 billion repair bill. In the arid western states, drought rather than floods often causes dams to make the news. Colorado River reservoirs supply drinking water to 40 million people in seven states but face increasing challenges — and decreasing water levels — with a multi-year drought across the region. And dams serve other roles — navigation, irrigation, recreation and, of course, electricity generation.
-Written by Dan Reicher, a Senior Scholar at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability; and Tom Kiernan, CEO of American Rivers; and Malcolm Woolf, CEO of the National Hydropower Association.