Advantages of Dams

Advantages of dams are numerous, that is the reason so much money and work goes into building and maintaining them. Some of the advantages are:

• Electricity is produced at the constant rate with the help of hydroelectricity or hydroelectric power.
• If there is no need for electricity, then the sluice gates can also be closed or stopping the generation of electricity. Water can also be saved for the use of another time as and when the demand for electricity is high hence the usage of water remains judicious.
• Dams are so designed by well-qualified engineers to span many of the decades and also can contribute to the generation of electricity for about many years or even decades to come.
• The lake or reservoir which forms behind the dam can also be used for the irrigation purpose, water sports or even as other forms of pleasurable activities.Few large dams such as the Bhakra Nangal dam present in India is the tourist attractions.
• The buildup of water inside lake means that the energy can also be stored when needed and also when water is released for producing the electricity.
• When used, the produced electricity by the dams does not even produce the greenhouse gases and also hence they do not pollute the atmosphere.

BIG DAMS are BIG TROUBLES because:

• 16 million Indian people have been forced from their homes because of construction of big dams and not enough resettlement sites have been set up for the amount of people already displaced.
•  Big dams causes Earthquakes (bcos of the weight of water in reservoirs), release Greenhouse gas (bcos of rotting of flooded vegetation)
• Environmental Impacts:-
• Threat to aquatic habitat –barriers for fish passage, water quality is affected because of change in land use can also affect aquatic life
•  Water logging – excess water in the soil can render the soil useless
•  Salinisation – When the land to be irrigated is an arid area and not used to so much water then irrigation water has more saline content and adds more salt to the system
•  Deforestation– Big Dams are now occupying forests.
• Health Impacts:-
   Outbreak of diseases – the concern of an increase in malaria because of the increased reservoirs and water logged lands, which are prime locations for mosquitoes to breed.

The fact is that the problems with large dams are many and serious, they won’t go away—and neither will controversies so Alternatives should be promoted and brought into use as much as possible through spreading the wisdom of traditional Water Harvesting techniques in most drought-prone areas and start working with cities, towns to install Rainwater harvesting structures on rooftops all over India. Lastly we must realise that there are no unlimited sources of energy, so we must at some point limit consumption of electricity and use it more efficiently!

Conclusion :-