New Water Development By Enhancing and Restoring Wetlands and Beaver Dam Complexes
Summary
New water development should solve more problems that it creates. New water development should link water quantity with water quality. Hopefully, new water development should make both environmental sense and economic sense. Restoring and enhancing degraded stream channels by restoring old beaver dam complexes and wetlands improves water quality. A challenge is to do this and acquire water rights. The ability to obtain a water right for restoring or enhancing a beaver dam and wetland complex provides valued “legitimacy” to the effort. The difference between costs for restoration and costs for constructing the equivalent amount of traditional water storage can fund restoration projects. Finally, with a water right, there is likely to be greater commitment toward maintaining the restored conditions and the project. Virtually every headwater stream in the West had some beaver dams before trapping and settlement activity removed the beavers. However, the beavers left behind a legacy. This was the shallow aquifer composed of sediment trapped behind the beaver dams along small stream channels - those of the 1°, 2", 3", and even 4" orders. These streams tend to be flashy with high flows during snowmelt or summer storms. At other times the flow is just a trickle or none at all. Water stored and released from the aquifers sustained water flows and riparian vegetation.
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