There are thousands of aging dams in the U.S. that are no longer serving their intended function and/or pose a safety risk to downstream communities. In many cases, the removal of old dams is more cost-effective than retrofitting or rebuilding new infrastructure. Dam removal also tends to bring substantial environmental benefits. However, dam removal is also a resource-intensive process and, given the large number of dams that exist on the landscape, deciding which dams to remove requires careful consideration of the costs and benefits. In a new paper led by Suman Jumani, we present a screening framework for guiding dam removal planning to address this need.
Fig. 1. Overview of the dam removal decision-support framework. Steps outlined in solid lines (Tier 1 and Tier 2) can be computed through desktop analyses. Steps outlined in dashed lines are those that require additional computational work and assessment of local, socio-cultural factors that may influence the feasibility of dam removal (Tier 3).
