Take one unintended consequence of the seemingly innocuous suburban lawn. Lawn fertilizer applied even some distance away eventually makes its way into the river, harming fish and other aquatic animals. When fertilizer runs off lawns after a rainfall, it feeds the river's algae. This algae growth cuts off sunlight to the bottom, which in turn kills the plants that generate the oxygen that fish need to breathe. Dams along the river complicate the situation.
Dams make for better boating and recreation by slowing the flow of the river.
But in causing the flow of the river to slow, they aid the growth of algae, which grows best in still water. In many places the river acts less like a river and more like a chain of small lakes, which in some ways is what it has become. After the dam, the river flowed quickly, though not quite in reckless abandon. Moore says that because of the way that the Fox is dammed for recreational use, certain standards that apply to still bodies of water such as lakes but not rivers should apply to the Fox. One such standard the Fox would exceed if applied is the phosphorus standard for lakes.