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Dams
Dams are major construction projects. Large dams are usually designed, built, and operated by public institutions. Even privately owned and operated dams require significant and ongoing regulatory permitting. But unlike government office buildings or cathedrals, they are also instrumental manipulations of the natural world for industrial purposes (energy generation, transportation, irrigation for industrial agriculture, and the provision of water to large urban areas). Therefore, large dams are illustrative of the nexus of industrial engineering, environmental science, and social and economic public policy— a nexus that has gone through significant changes in the last 100 years. Dams continue to be seen by many as symbols of instrumentality and progress even as others focus increasingly on the unintended consequences and negative externalities associated with human intervention in ...
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