American Rivers

The river restoration program brings rivers back to life by removing dams, replacing culverts, and restoring floodplains through practice, policy, and strategic capacity building. American rivers acknowledges that we only need to give rivers a boost and their natural resiliency will allow them to recover and thrive. Our restoration work capitalizes on nature's strengths and those of our staff and partners to make a difference for rivers throughout the u.s.our national and state policy efforts are increasingly improving the regulatory landscape to allow for more efficient, high quality river restoration work in the future. In addition, outreach to federal agencies has resulted in new partnerships that will lead to strategic high priority restoration initiatives on federal lands across the country.

Our federal river management work focuses on the reform of hydropower operation in the country. While hydropower helps us supply much needed fossil-free energy, it is not without impacts. Hydropower dams block rivers and can leave several miles of river sections dry. In addition, they block fish passage, alter habitat for aquatic species, damage water quality and harm the overall integrity of the river ecosystems. Through our hydropower reform program, we seek to modernize the operations of hydropower dams to improve their environmental performance using existing regulatory processes. We also seek to improve policies that dictate hydropower licensing and promote responsible hydropower development.

Water. What could be more important to our health, our communities, and our lives? by focusing our efforts on stopping pollution from sewage spills and stormwater runoff, american rivers is working to ensure that our rivers and streams are safe for drinking, fishing, swimming and boating. And by safeguarding small streams and wetlands, we are preserving nature's ability to filter and supply clean water. As droughts, floods and waterborne diseases intensify with global warming, this "natural infrastructure" will become more important than ever.we all need clean water. There's no substitute. But our nation's finite water supplies are under increasing stress from the needs of our growing population, development, energy production, irrigated agriculture, and the challenges brought by climate change. As the source of water for many of our communities, rivers flow right through the center of the water supply issue. American rivers is working to secure reliable and predictable clean water supplies for communities and the rivers on which they depend.we advocate at the national, state and local levels for water efficiency and low impact supply solutions that provide cheaper, faster, and more reliable water than costly and harmful new dams and other short-sighted water storage projects. And we work to protect the water flowing in rivers so that it can continue to nourish our communities for years to come.