> The floods are significantly worse because of the dams. No they are not. Dams mitigate damage during floods because you have buffer capacity and control ove

> The floods are significantly worse because of the dams. No they are not. Dams mitigate damage during floods because you have buffer capacity and control over outflow. Without dams, you get uncontrolled flooding every single time that there is a lot of rain. With dams, you only get uncontrolled flooding on dam failure, which tends to happen less often than... heavy rain. > The construction of the dam will flood a ton of land upstream of the dam. If you've been to the beach you'll notice that the water doesn't need to go up or down very much for a ton of area to be flooded so in order to get that extra space. Yes, large water reservoirs need large amounts of space. That is a completely different argument from flood risk, though, and those costs are negotiated on before the dam is even built.