A dam is monumentally static; it tries to bring a river under control, to regulate its seasonal pattern of floods and low flow.

~ Patrick Mccully

Patrick Mccully Dams Ecology Flooding Nature Rivers

Underlying many aspects of water development is a myth: the myth that we must have more.

~ Tim Palmer

Tim Palmer Dams Environmental History Myths Nature Water Water Development

Even though this generation still believes in the miracle working power of God, they must no longer wait for God to bring water from the rocks, but rather construct dams, water systems, subdue the power of the ocean thereby give glory to God almighty

~ Sunday Adelaja

Sunday Adelaja Almighty Believes Bring But Construct Dams Even From Generation Give Glory God Longer Miracle Must Ocean Power Rather Rocks Still Subdue Thereby They This Though Wait Water Water Systems

Dams also tend to be built in remote areas which are the last refuge for species that have been displaced by development in other regions.

~ Patrick Mccully

Patrick Mccully Animals Biodiversity Biology Dams Ecology Endangered Species Wildlife

In the 1940s dams were synonymous with progress, and the rivers were to be conquered with the fervour of a pioneer wielding an axe.

~ Tim Palmer

Tim Palmer American History Dams Environmental History Frontier Progress Water Management

I don’t know why we keep building these fucking dams,” Adams said in a surprisingly forceful British whisper. “Not only do they cause environmental and social disasters, they, with very few exceptions, all fail to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Look at the Amazon, where they’ve all silted up. What is the reaction to that? They’re going to build another eighty of them. It’s just balmy. We must have beaver genes or something. . . . There’s just this kind of sensational desire to build dams, and maybe that should be looked at and excised from human nature. Maybe the Human Genome Project can locate the beaver/dam-building gene and cut that out.

~ Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams Dams Environment

What do you consider the most interesting man-made structure in the galaxy?The dam they are building at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse. Though perhaps '“baffling'” would be a better word. Dams almost never do what they were intended to do, but create devastation beyond belief. And yet we keep on building them, and I can'’t help but wonder why. I'’m convinced that if we go back far enough in the history of the human species, we will find some beaver genes creeping in there somewhere. It'’s the only explanation that makes sense.

~ Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams Dams Environment Humor

A dam tears at all the interconnected webs of river valley life.

~ Patrick Mccully

Patrick Mccully Dams Ecology Environmental History Rivers Water

By erecting thirty thousand dams of significant size across the American West, they dewatered countless rivers, wiped out millions of acres of riparian habitat, shut off many thousands of river miles of salmon habitat, silted over spawning beds, poisoned return flows with agricultural chemicals, set the plague of livestock loose on the arid land--in a nutshell they made it close to impossible for numerous native species to survive.

~ Marc Reisner

Marc Reisner Agriculture Dams Fish Water