Should we Damn the Dams?

Battles over dams dominated environmental activism for much of the twentieth century. Can their removal and what comes next point the way towards a rewilded and better future?

Photo by Tyke Jones on Unsplash The Hetch Hetchy Dam, Yosemite

The decision to dam a river is zero sum: you can’t half build a dam. Either the river is dammed, or it isn’t. This dichotomy made dams the twentieth century’s most contentious environmental topic, pitting two sides that considered themselves stewards of the land on behalf of current and future generations against each other: “prudent managers” or those in favor of the measured use of natural resources, and “conservationists” who prioritized the maintenance of wilderness.

Dams bend the will of nature to that of man, obstructing and altering rivers. They bring hydropower and irrigation, but do so at the expense of the surrounding lands and riparian ecosystems. Whether or not this is a good trade depends on your perspective. Are you the prudent manager type who views rivers as resources to be controlled and exploited by man, or more of a conservationist who believes that rivers should meander at will, rerouting and spilling their banks as they see fit while serving as byways for species, nutrients, and people?

Gifford Pinchot, who became the first Chief of Forestry for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1905, embodied the prudent manager ethic. His theory of forestry management, which he extended into an overall politics that he naively thought could be the foundation of peace between nations, rested on three principles: 1) the prudent use, protection, preservation, and renewal of natural resources; 2) ensuring that people can access those natural resources at a fair price; and 3) making sure that monopolies don’t corner the market for natural resources. (Meter 270)

Writing to Congress in 1907, Pinchot’s friend, boss, and ideological ally President Theodore Roosevelt argued that failing to exploit our natural resources would “result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.” (Billington et al. 31). To have and not exploit natural resources would be to deny our children the blessings of civilization and progress.

On the other side were John Muir and likeminded conservationists who believed that the worth of a landscape, the importance of wilderness, outweighed the financial benefits that could be extracted from its management, prudent or otherwise. You can’t quantify beauty on a balance sheet.

Conservationists wanted to protect the land and make it accessible to people because they understood the benefits of nature. Decades roaming the backcountry of the Sierra Nevadas also imbued Muir with a rewilded mind. His writings about nature leapt off the page, connecting people across the continent to the splendors of Yosemite, making them advocates for the preservation of wilderness in the process.

Muir saw how time in nature could awaken people from the “stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury… [by] tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness. (Muir 1901)

Technocratic management versus preservation for the soul. There were bound to be conflicts, as both sides viewed the lands as providing what we needed.

The first big clash centered on the fate of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The Hetch Hetchy mirrored the nearby Valley of the Yosemite, with its cliffs and waterfalls, meadows for camping, and breathless views. Yet its proximity to San Francisco and position on the Tuolumne River made it an ideal location for a reservoir.

San Francisco needed water, and one viable option for providing it—according to the Army Corps of Engineers, there were several other options—and bringing much needed electricity to the city in the wake of the devastating earthquake of 1906, was damming the Tuolumne River. Because the Hetch Hetchy was part of a National Park, the debate, which began in earnest in 1903, eventually found its way to Congress with the introduction of the Raker Bill. Introduced in April 1913, the bill would grant San Francisco the right to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

The question was, what do we need more: water and power for our cities or undammed rivers for our souls?

Prudent managers viewed damming the Hetch Hetchy as a small price to pay for securing water for a great American city. The Hypatia Women’s Club of San Francisco wrote to Congress in favor of the dam. They asserted that San Francisco needed the water, and besides, the Hetch Hetchy was a small and remote valley that was often flooded; creating a reservoir would beautify the area. They had little patience for conservationists: “The individual who adores every bush or tree that has ever become a familiar object and who would sacrifice the rights and needs of a great city for pure water to a more aesthetic desire to permit the slightest modification of scene, is irrational and unjust.” (Hypatia Women's Club)

But were the conservationists irrational and unjust, or just coming from a different perspective? “This wonderful region was set aside for the preservation of great natural monuments for the use of all the people and to give it away to a corporation is not only a wrong to the rest of the nation, but would mark a return to the commercial treatment of public lands from which the reservation policy has rescued them,” wrote The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. (The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society).

Muir was less measured in his opinion. “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the hearts of man.” (Meter 276-277).

In the end, the Raker Bill passed, granting San Francisco full access to build a reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Work on the O'Shaughnessy Dam began in 1914—the same year that John Muir died of pneumonia.

In response to the debate over the Hetch Hetchy, and perhaps not wanting to be thrust into the middle of future debates, Congress established the National Park Service in The Organic Act of 1916. The goal of the Park Service was clear: “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” (“Organic Act of 1916 - Great Basin National Park (U.S”) There’s no room for a dam in that definition of duties. Score one for the conservationists.

Another generation, another battle. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the most prudent of managers was Floyd Dominy, who led the Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation from 1959-1969. (In modern usage, it wouldn’t be the Bureau of Reclamation, but rather the Bureau of Irrigation.) David Brower, long-time Executive Director of the Sierra Club, led the conservationists.

An accomplished mountaineer, Brower was credited with 33 first ascents in the Sierra Nevada (McPhee 232). He joined the Sierra Club in 1930, almost 50 years after John Muir co-founded it, and led it as its first Executive Director from 1952-1969.

Here’s Brower speaking to an audience: “I hate all dams, large and small.” When asked why, he responded, “If you are against something, you are for something. If you are against a dam, you are for a river.” (McPhee 159). Brower understood that dam sites are forever. Those in favor of preserving wilderness “have to win again and again and again. The enemy [those who seek to exploit wilderness areas] only has to win once. We are not out for ourselves. We can’t win. We can only get a stay of execution. That is the best we can hope for. If the dam is not built, the damsite is still there.” (McPhee 85-86)

For another perspective, Dominy understood firsthand just how vital dams and irrigation were in rain scarce areas from his time as a county manager in the rangelands of northeast Wyoming. He knew that a lack of water could break strong people and communities—needlessly, in his mind, when we had the tools to control and move the water to where it was needed for man.

Here’s Dominy: “Let’s use our environment. Nature changes the environment every day of our lives—why shouldn’t we change it. We’re part of nature…The challenge to man is to do and save what is good but to permit man to progress in civilization. Hydroelectric power doesn’t pollute water and it doesn’t pollute air. You don’t get any pollution out of my dams. The unregulated Colorado was a son of a bitch. It wasn’t any good. It was either in flood or in trickle. In addition to creating economic benefits with our dams, we regulate the river, and we have created the sort of river Dave Brower dreams about. Who are the best conservationists—doers or preservationists? I can’t talk to preservationists. I can’t talk to Brower, because he’s so God-damned ridiculous.” (McPhee 173)

Their battle ended in a stalemate. Brower won the skirmish over the Echo Park dam, famously placing an ad in the New York Times asking: “Should We Also Flood the Sistine Chapel so Tourists Can Get Nearer the Ceiling?” (Brower) Dominy, for his part, got the Glen Canyon Dam built in the wake of his defeat at Echo Park. If you want to learn more about these characters, I suggest reading Encounters with the Archdruid; in Part III, Brower and Dominy raft down the Colorado together.

Shortly after being forced out as the Executive Director of the Sierra Club in 1969, David Brower visited the Hetch Hetchy dam with the writer John McPhee. While Yosemite Valley was chock-full of tourists just a few miles away, Brower and McPhee had the Hetch Hetchy to themselves, save a wildcat leisurely strolling across the road and off into the woods. Standing atop the dam, Brower said, “It was not needed when it was built, and it is not needed now.” He continued, “I would like to see it taken down, and watch the process of recovery.” (McPhee 160-161)

What he didn’t know then was that his battles with Dominy marked the end of the era of grand dam building in the American West. For decades, he criss-crossed the country, galvanizing audiences with his “Sermon,” a powerful call-to-action that left audiences activated and ready to do their part to preserve and protect the wilderness. He commissioned the “Exhibit Format Book Series”, coffee table books that included photographs from Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter accompanied by essays espousing the wonders of nature from John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and contemporary authors. He built the Sierra Club into a national force. He inspired future leaders, including Yvon Chounard and Doug Tompkins. In the end, he helped create a modern environmental movement imbued with his disdain for dams.

Systems change takes time; there are always delays between a new idea gaining purchase and it manifesting changes in the physical world. Yet slowly, the dams began to be taken down, beginning in the 1970s, increasing through the end of the century, and accelerating through the first decades of this century.

Source: American Rivers Dam Removal Database

While the conservationists generally won the debate over dams in the US, many remain, including the largest like the Hoover and Grand Coulee. Even larger ones continue to be built across the globe (China completed the Three Gorges Dam in 2006 and has plans to build a bigger one in Tibet), and there is still debate over how the forests surrounding those waterways should be treated. There’s also a pitched battle between prudent managers and conservationists over carbon emissions, pitting those in favor of sustainable development and a phased transition away from fossil fuels against those who want the coal and oil to stay in the ground.

We’ll return to carbon later, but for now, I want to turn my attention to a different question: what happens once the dams come down? Can ecosystems restore themselves and, if so, can we find a synthesis between the prudent managers and the conservationists that can lead to a truly sustainable and rewilded path forward?

To explore this topic, I’ll travel to the Elwha River later this Spring to see what’s happened in the ten years since the dams, which had stood for a century, came down.

---

American Rivers. American Rivers Dam Removal Database. American Rivers Dam Removal Database, American Rivers, https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/American_Rivers_Dam_Removal_Database/5234068. Accessed 17 February 2025.

The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. Petition from the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society Against the Raker Bil. 25 June 1913, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/scenic.html.

Billington, David P., et al. THE HISTORY OF LARGE FEDERAL DAMS: PLANNING, DESIGN, AND CONSTRUCTION IN THE ERA OF BIG DAMS. Denver, U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, 2005, https://www.usbr.gov/history/HistoryofLargeDams/LargeFederalDams.pdf. Accessed 16 February 2025.

Brower, David. “Should We Also Flood the Sistine Chapel so Tourists Can Get Nearer the Ceiling?” The New York Times, 9 June 1966, https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/1966-sistine-chapel/659fdb5c7b6f3d07/full.pdf. Accessed 17 February 2025.

Featherman, Hannah. “What are the differences between National Parks and National Forests?” National Forest Foundation, https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/what-are-the-differences-between-national-parks-and-national-forests. Accessed 17 February 2025.

“The Hetch Hetchy Timeline - John Muir National Historic Site (U.S.” National Park Service, 18 July 2024, https://www.nps.gov/jomu/learn/historyculture/the-hetch-hetchy-timeline.htm. Accessed 16 February 2025.

Hypatia Women's Club. Petition Supporting Granting San Francisco Water Rights to Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy. 5 February 1910, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/hypatia.html.

Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs. Resolution by Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs Against the Raker Bill. 25 November 1913, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/massachusetts.html.

McPhee, John. Encounters with the Archdruid. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

Meter, John M. “Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the Boundaries of Politics in American Thought.” Polity, vol. 30, no. 2, 1997, pp. 267-284. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3235219. Accessed 16 February 2025.

Muir, John. Our National Parks. Boston, BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 1901, https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/chapter_1.aspx. Accessed 16 February 2025.

“Organic Act of 1916 - Great Basin National Park (U.S.” National Park Service, 22 April 2021, https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/management/organic-act-of-1916.htm. Accessed 16 February 2025.

Sierra Club. “David Brower.” https://www.sierraclub.org/library/david-brower. Accessed 17 February 2025.

Sierra Club. “Historical Accomplishments.” Sierra Club, https://www.sierraclub.org/accomplishments. Accessed 17 February 2025.

Society for the Preservation of National Parks. Petition from the Society for the Preservation of National Parks Against Granting San Francisco the Hetch Hetchy Valley. 27 June 1913, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/preservation.html.

Swedish Clubs of San Francisco. Petition Supporting the Raker Bill. December 1913. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/swedish.html.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. National Inventory of Dams, https://nid.sec.usace.army.mil/#/. Accessed 17 February 2025.