How America’s Obsession with Dams Backfired Horribly

America's massive dams were supposed to be engineering triumphs—powering the Southwest, securing water for millions, taming wild rivers. Instead, they delivered environmental catastrophe, economic disaster, and a water crisis threatening the entire region.

At Lake Powell, a white bathtub ring stretches 185 feet up the canyon walls—evidence of $9 billion worth of water lost to evaporation. At Flaming Gorge, we spent $100 million trying to save fish we deliberately poisoned. In Yosemite, we sacrificed an entire valley to an eternity underwater. These dams cost over $100 billion in today's dollars, built during America's dam-building frenzy from the 1900s to 1960s.

Here's what almost nobody knows: we had evidence these projects would fail before we even built them. Scientists warned. Naturalists protested. The math didn't add up. We built them anyway.

But in one remote Colorado canyon, we actually got it right—and saved what might be the most important river ecosystem in the American West.

We'll take you from Lake Powell's shrinking reservoir to the Cathedral in the Desert now re-emerging from the water, through John Muir's final battle over Hetch Hetchy, to the dam that was never built at Dinosaur National Monument—and what that teaches us about hubris, humility, and whether we can still choose nature over concrete.

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