Since the dams appeared on the Rio Colorado decades ago, the Colorado Delta between Sonora and Baja del Norte continues to dry out. The lack of fresh river water and sediment minerals is causing massive declines in biodiversity of delta ecosystems..
This may seem like old news since the initial protests decades ago against the massive dams and water diversions, though the current ecosystem collapse of the delta shows the long term consequences are occurring..
Near village El Golfo de Santa Clara vaquitas (dolphins)pescadores (fishermen/women) and the Cucapa tribe are struggling to survive the yearly decline of wild rice, cammarones (shrimp) and almehas (clams) that were so plentiful in the Colorado Delta years before the fresh river water disappeared. People who have lived their for decades report the ongoing decline of sealife from the lack of fresh water/sediments since the dams..
Lack of fresh water increases salinity which makes life difficult for the life dependent on the fresh/salt water mix..
Lack of sediments (physically weathered rocks transported downstream via the Rio Colorado) means lack of minerals for uptake by microbes that live in the delta. The ocean/sea cannot supply the needed minerals to the extant that the river brought there daily. The mineral sediments supply essential elements like iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg) and others to the delta in fragmented forms. Various beneficial bacteria depend on oxygen to dissolve the mineral fragments into aqueous form for uptake by other organisms like plankton. The shrimp and clams in turn feed on the plankton..
As sediments pile up behind the dams they are deprived of oxygen, thereby trapping the minerals that would be spread out across the wider delta. Not to mention they displace water and increase strain on the aging structures. Since the United States government has decided to challenge most of the Arab nations in their Iraqi oil theft war, they also require intensive 24/7 security. The cost of dam maintenence/security comes out of public schools and colleges, just so some wealthy elite can play golf in the desert sun on a course watered with stolen Colorado River water..
Since China joined the WTO and got friendly with the Bush cabal, the Chinese government has decided to build the world's largest dam on the Yangtze River. Despite numerous protests from Chinese people living downstream (not reported in the media), the government steamrolled the dam into existence. The slight electricity would only power lights for a few sweatshops, but enough for the corporate elite to profit from sweatshop made consumer junk exported to Walmart from China's totalitarian socialist slavocracy..
http://web.uccs.edu/mmills/documents/environmental_problems.htm Choices are water for lawns in the desert (could be growing native drought tolerent grasses, much prettier), water for the Imperial Valley agribusiness (encouraged to waste water on alfalfa for beef industry, could be growing drought tolerant jojoba and tepary beans), slight electricity (could be provided more efficiently via solar cells, but since British Petroleum bought out the largest solar photovoltiac manufacturer, we may be waiting),
OR..
the Colorado delta ecosystem returned fresh Colorado river water and missing mineral sediments for essential elements for plankton, shrimp, clams, vaquitas, Cucapa people returning to a harmonious life with the delta ecosystem before the biodiversity extinction proceeds to collapse another indigenous people off the Earth..