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Changing Course: Daniel McCool on Dams, Water, and Our River Future
Description
Author and professor Daniel McCool grew up exploring the rivers, creeks, and streams near his Indiana home. When his career took him to the West, his fascination with flowing water continued to grow. In 2012, he wrote about the value of rivers and the troubles with modern river management in his book, River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America’s Rivers. In this podcast, McCool and I take a deep dive into the world of rivers and talk about the past, present, and future of our relationship with them.
We cover topics including the history of dam construction and the limitations of dam-building for addressing our water problems and how our river management policies have typically ignored environmental and social costs. We talk about water policy and the challenges of managing limited water resources in the West, then meander into a discussion about the far-fetched proposals to build giant pipelines to move water from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to the West.
We also discuss the cascading consequences of engineering the Mississippi River, and the challenges of changing policies that benefit a small number of people but that don’t have much impact on anyone else. Thousands of dams in the US are well past their expected lifespan now, so we talk about the difficult decisions ahead about what to do with those obsolete structures. We touch on a couple of high-profile examples of dam removal and the emerging science of river restoration, then finish with a few thoughts about how we can get more people involved in making decisions about river management. If you’re a fan of rivers, like I am, this episode is for you.