While I broadly agree with you, most of the dam removal projects I see in the US are tiny dams which have little to no potential for use as fresh water sources

While I broadly agree with you, most of the dam removal projects I see in the US are tiny dams which have little to no potential for use as fresh water sources and generate tiny amounts of electricity. I'm strongly in favor of replacing the lost capacity with much larger dams though which have the ability to hold non-trivial amounts of water and have the ability to generate significant amounts of power. Relatively speaking, the ecological impacts are disproportionately large for what we gain with smaller dams.