ABSTRACT
Standing atop the McPherrin Dam on Butte Creek, California, in 1998, sledgehammer in hand, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt declared the era of big dam construction to be over. He then made the first of many blows to the dam, initiating the new era of rethinking dams: “Dams are not like the pyramids of Egypt that stand for eternity. They are instruments that should be judged by the health of the rivers to which they belong” (Egan, 1998). Since then, approximately 1,100 dams have been removed nationally (American Rivers, 2014; O’Connor, Duda, & Grant, 2015), with hundreds more under consideration for removal for economic, environmental, or structural reasons. Despite a concerted effort to remove dams in the United States, and indeed in many other countries, large dam construction is poised to make an international comeback. Governments throughout the developing world are currently planning for and constructing thousands of dams in spite of local, regional, and international opposition efforts motivated by projected social and ecological consequences. The contemporary proliferation of dam building represents a global environmental conundrum for sustainable watershed management: what are the political, social, and environmental processes that, on one hand, question the continued efficacy of large dams and, on the other, push forward a global dam construction agenda?
