This is something everyone should be worried about, and everyone should be angry about, frankly,” NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello said.
Derkek might be “shocked” to hear that most people don’t care… at all. Well, not enough to change how they Vote or how they act.
The short answer is that no fish ladder is 100% effective, and part of a river becoming a lake will always change the local ecosystem for better or worse. Both of these things arn’t new, not all fish have ever made it upstream and land slips create new lakes often enough, but they do have an impact.
You’re probably better off looking at one of the few major dam removal projects in California if you want to see the ecological arguments against hydro however, as I don’t think I can make a very good case when I personally think that combating gobal climate change should absolutely take priority over local effects.
Mostly because if we are building renewables as fast as ‘economically practically’ will allow, and we are still using coal and natural gas to generate significant amounts of electricity at any time, then shutting down ang renewable or low carbon generation like hydro or nuclear inherently means that load is being generated by coal and gas at cost of putting hundreds to thousands of metric tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere per day said plant is offline.