What are the impacts of growth on the aquatic environment?
Impacts vary widely. Construction of dams can have a devastating ecological impact on stream ecosystems. Similarly, human uses can dramatically deplete streamflows, and can introduce pollutants into water bodies. Not all impacts are negative, however, as alterations to streamflow regimes often provide unexpected benefits to some species and locations. For example, the South Platte River is a perennial stream only due to human activity and, particularly, to trans-basin diversions that feed the river with flows from the Upper Colorado system. In general, the protection of instream flows and the environmental restoration of systems impacted by dams, diversions, and related activities, have traditionally not been high priorities in western water law, policy, and management. That is slowly changing.
