All over the eastern part of the United States, thousands of small dams block the flow of water in streams and rivers, harkening back to colonial times. Originally constructed for energy and milling operations by settlers or companies, most of the milldams no longer serve human purposes. Now, many of these inactive dams are being removed by government and private agencies—driven by a need or hope of increasing public safety, reducing liability and improving aquatic habitats.

However, less attention is being paid to whether removing the dams will harm water quality, which is precisely what University of Delaware Professor Shreeram Inamdar is investigating. As the researcher explains, blocking the water unintentionally provides a valuable benefit. Soil upstream of the dam becomes richer in carbon, which acts as an important filter of nitrogen, a key pollutant in our nation’s waterways.

Of course this article is talking about the importance of “Mill Dams” and you know we’re thinking of another kind of small dam entirely. I guess I’m going to need one of the many graduate students working on this research to sit down and explain to me why a beaver dam is any fucking different. And why they aren’t broadening their research to include the removal and destruction of the tens of thousands of beaver dams that are taken out every year by responsible cities and landowners just “Doing the right thing” for their property.

“This natural filtering service reduces stream water nitrogen concentrations, improves water quality and saves limited conservation resources,” said Inamdar, who serves as director of UD’s Water Science and Policy Graduate Program.

The rapid response grant focuses on the effects of milldam removal on riparian (riverside) groundwater and stream water quality in Pennsylvania, which has the highest dam removal rate of any state. Dam removals could potentially undermine this filtering service, which is valuable to ecosystems, and increase the cost of cleaning up waterways. On the other hand, removal of dams could introduce a more dynamic groundwater regime—like greater fluctuations of water levels in stream-side soils leading to potentially greater processing and removal of nitrogen. Determining which of these two scenarios happen is the focus of the study.

So removing dams is bad in many ways, And thank goodness we’re here with a crack team of researchers to tell you which is worse.  I mean it would be one thing if there were skilled teams on hand responsible for all these dams and making repairs every time one faltered night after night and costing us nothing. But that’s impossible. Of course progress and human infrastructure demands that we keep on ripping out beaver dams anyway.

I guess it’s nice of you to admit it matters.

[wonderplugin_video videotype=”mp4″ mp4=”https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/video/2019/antiquatedda.mp4″ webm=”” poster=”” lightbox=0 lightboxsize=1 lightboxwidth=960 lightboxheight=540 autoopen=0 autoopendelay=0 autoclose=0 lightboxtitle=”” lightboxgroup=”” lightboxshownavigation=0 showimage=”” lightboxoptions=”” videowidth=600 videoheight=400 keepaspectratio=1 autoplay=0 loop=0 videocss=”position:relative;display:block;background-color:#000;overflow:hidden;max-width:100%;margin:0 auto;” playbutton=”https://www.martinezbeavers.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wonderplugin-video-embed/engine/playvideo-64-64-0.png”]