Reconnecting over 4,000 km of waterway

Progress has been increasing on the removal of dams set up for mills during the 1800s on America’s eastern rivers, with 2024 recording 108 dams removed, reconnecting over 4,000 kilometres of waterway.

By TPN, in North America, Environment · 03 Oct 2026, 08:31 · 1 Comments

Credits: Unsplash; Author: Cédric Dhaenens;

A total of 2,300 dams have been demolished since 1912, with 1,100 of these taking place in the east, bringing bountiful rewards: in Maine, the river herring population has rebounded by six million after two dams were removed along the Penobscot River.

Waterway blockages remain an outstanding issue in the local ecosystem, with 35,000 dams still serving to fracture aquatic species, but this is a vast improvement over the 65,000 dams that existed at the peak of the American milling boom.

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Comments

What does the Hoover Dam in Nevada have to do with mill dams built in the 1800's in the Northeast USA? I lived in Las Vegas for 30 years before retiring and moving to Madeira, partly because Madeira has far better water security than the southwest USA. If you were to remove the Hoover Dam you would make the southwest USA uninhabitable, displacing millions of people. You can argue that those communities should not exist in the first place, and they definitely should not be expanding and continuing new construction, but is that the fault of the people who live there? This is irresponsible journalism. You've lost me as a reader.

By William Mansfield from Madeira on 04 Oct 2026, 08:04