What are the disadvantages of dams?

Published by: Chief Engineer Mohit Sanguri • edited by: Lamar Stonecypher • updated: 4/5/2013

Dams are designed global to keep water for irrigation, flood control, and generate electrical energy. However, there are numerous bad ecological aftereffects of building big hydroelectric dams. What's a solution to the difficulties?

• Dams are built all over the globe to regulate floods, shop water and for the generation of electricity. Until now some 800, 000 dams have-been constructed globally. But numerous unwanted effects of big hydroelectric dams came to light, slowing the development of future dams.

  Not all the dams tend to be built for the generation of electrical energy. A number of them basically for storage of liquid for the dried out months. There are various kinds of hydroelectric energy plants, and never all need a reservoir of liquid. Listed below are three associated with the main kinds:

  1. Storage kind hydroelectric power plants with dams for gathering and saving liquid. Water can be kept for summer season and for dried out many years, depending on the ability for the reservoir.
  2. Run associated with the river form of hydroelectric power plants which do not collect liquid but they are built on rivers which have good flow and normal rivers coming from a level having great possible power.
  3. Moved storage forms of hydroelectric energy plants in which liquid is moved to a reservoir in off-peak hours and electrical energy is produced in maximum hours to supplement the production. It is similar to a storage facility for electricity.

• Benefits of Dams

  1. Clean, efficient, and dependable type of power.
  2. Doesn't emit any direct pollutants or greenhouse gases.
  3. Even though the initial cost is high, these are generally very cheap to operate.
  4. Electrical energy produced by hydro-electric energy plants may be the most affordable electricity produced.
  5. Dams stop floods.
  6. Dams store liquid for irrigation in summer months and dry months. Numerous wilderness areas can farm due to dams and canals that supply water.
  7. Dams supply liquid for local consuming needs.
  8. Permits seafood agriculture.

• Bad Impact of Dams

  1. In level basins huge dams cause flooding of big tracts of land, destroying neighborhood pets and habitats.
  2. Folks have is displaced causing improvement in life style and traditions, also causing psychological scar tissue formation. About 40 to 80 million individuals have already been displaced actually by dams global.
  3. Large amounts of plant life tend to be submerged and decay anaerobically (in the absence of oxygen) creating greenhouse gases like methane. It's estimated that a hydroelectric power plant produces 3.5 times the amount of carbon dioxide as a thermal power-plant burning fossil fuels.
  4. The migratory structure of lake animals like salmon and trout are impacted.
  5. Dams restrict sediments that are accountable for the fertile lands downstream. Farmers use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to compensate the loss in productivity.
  6. Salt water intrusion into the deltas implies that the saline water cannot be employed for irrigation.
  7. Big dams tend to be reproduction reasons for mosquitoes and cause the scatter of condition.
  8. Farmers downstream who always wait for the floods associated with the industries to plant their particular seeds tend to be affected.
  9. Dams act as a temperature sink, together with water is hotter versus regular river-water. This heated water whenever released in to the river downstream make a difference animal life.
  10. Top energy functions can alter water level thirty to forty feet in one time and that can eliminate the animals residing at the shorelines.