Dams Some people see more beauty in reservoirs than in rivers, but count me among those who prefer free-flowing water. A few years ago, South African Nelson Mandela, a champion of human rights, began thinking about dams in a different way altogether. Mandela began to wonder if dams were harmful to people. He launched an international group called the World Commission on Dams, which this month concluded two years of research. As many as 80 million people have been forced out of their homes by the world's 45,000 largest dams, according to the report.
Big dams have many, mostly negative impacts on ecosystems.
Those impacts also affect people, of course, because people are part of any ecosystem where a dam is built. Embrey Dam, constructed in 1910 and tentatively scheduled for demolition in 2002, never displaced anyone. And for years, that dam on the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg helped provide much-appreciated electricity. But the dam was harmful to the river's ecology. Therefore, not many people will miss that dam when it is gone.