Growing up in the west it's hard to avoid dams, they are everywhere. My introduction to their negative effects go back to the 2012 documentary “DamNation”, and it highlighted some major dams that major errors had been made on by the federal government. It focussed on the Elwha river for instance, whose dams are now gone and salmon swim freely home. From there I started reading Edward Abbey novels, where his 'fictional' environmental activism group “The Monkey Wrench Gang” plans to 'remove' the Glen Canyon Dam.
His books spurred my move to Utah where I got first hand experience working on the restoration of the Colorado, Provo, and San Juan rivers. The San Juan and Colorado are blocked at the Glen Canyon, and Hoover Dams. Truly disgusting blights on the beautiful land of the Navajo and Ute Nations. Both were built “illegally” by the way… Anyways, I've spent a lot of hours removing invasive trees, planting natives, building access trails, and floating (what one can still float) on these rivers. There is not a five or ten year solution to these dams, it is a problem that has built up for over 100 years and it will probably take at least that long to rectify what was done. That is why action is being taken and has to continue to be taken, elders in indigenous tribes should see their sacred salmon return, stock needs to be taken of the artifacts behind these dams, land needs to be returned to its rightful owners.
The experience I had in Central Utah was completely different to that of Southern Utah. In Heber City the Provo River flows between two massive blockages. The Jordanelle Dam and Deer Creek Dam, spaced only 20 or so miles apart, almost completely killed this river, almost taking 3 native species with it. That was twenty years ago, and today you'd have to look hard at that stretch of river to know that it was all but gone. An amazing restoration effort is nearing its completion, it included rechanneling the river and managing hundreds of acres of rapidly changing wetlands. But they did it! The river looks beautiful and natural, even as it sits between some very large dams.