"America and the age of dams" [2020] ELECD 56; in Kornfeld, Itzchak (ed), "Mega-Dams and Indigenous Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) 5

Book Title: Mega-Dams and Indigenous Human Rights

Editor(s): Kornfeld, Itzchak

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: America and the age of dams

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

Until the beginning of the twentieth century the Colorado River ran freely from its source, located in the Rocky Mountains. During the depression era of the twentieth century, United States initiated what, in subsequent decades, would become a worldwide surge of building large dams across almost every river basin in the world. That first large dam, the Hoover Dam, was constructed on the Colorado River. The United States’ second dam was built on the Columbia River, in the country’s northwest. Although, 40 years hence, we have learned about the ecological destruction that these dams caused, the electricity that these dams generated was enormously helpful when the United States entered World War II. However, these dams wreaked havoc with the Colorado River’s delta and today there is no water for either agriculture or fish. On the Columbia, Native American tribes lived for thousands of years prior to the European invasion. Salmon were their mainstay and a cultural emblem. But the Europeans destroyed their ability to earn a living.