Newsroom
July 24, 2024: How the Hydro Industry and Environmental Groups Found Common Ground (RTO Insider)
Uncommon Dialogue convened hydropower, environmental, and tribal advocates, helping them find common ground on hydro-development projects.
December 2023: Hydropower flexibility valuation tool for flow requirement evaluation (Energy Reports)
This article, co-authored by several Uncommon Dialogue Working Group 4 participants, describes a power evaluation tool and proposes a two-stage optimization method to understand hydropower flexibility to meet both environmental and power system requirements.
December 12, 2023: Stanford negotiator discusses compromise on environmental conflicts like Klamath dams (Jefferson Public Radio)
The biggest dam removal in US history is happening now on the Klamath river. Dan Reicher discusses how the Uncommon Dialogue approach relates to this dam removal.
November 16, 2023: Hydropower making sustainability gains with fish-safe turbines (Power Engineering)
The hydro industry has set an example of working collaboratively to maintain renewable energy production while improving environmental outcomes.
September 28, 2023: Is hydropower good or bad for the environment? We went to Idaho to find out (LA Times)
An unusual coalition has grown out of a dialogue convened at Stanford University.
September 6, 2023: Why you should give a damn about America’s dams (The Hill)
This summer’s unprecedented floods across the U.S. highlight how a massive piece of infrastructure — the nation’s 90,000-plus dams — can play the role of hero or villain in these climate-enhanced calamities.
July 10, 2023: Defining Community Is Slippery on the Eel River (Public Policy Institute of California)
Communities along the Eel River support the removal of two aging dams but many complexities prohibit them from going through with the process.
May 6, 2022: Giving old dams new life could spark an energy boom (Washington Post)
Reports on the work of Uncommon Dialogue participants to retrofit nonpowered dams.
May 2022: Watershed Moment (Stanford Magazine)
Dams help us. Dams harm us. Now, longtime adversaries are coming together to bridge that uncomfortable divide.
April 4, 2022: Tribes, Industry Groups Reach Deal to Boost U.S. Hydroelectric Power (Wall Street Journal)
Reports on an agreement reached through the Uncommon Dialogue on hydropower and river conservation with tribes and industry and environmental groups.
December 3, 2021: How hydroelectric dams fit into the U.S. energy portfolio (WBUR)
Dan Reicher joins WBUR's Here & Now to discuss hydroelectric dams, which provide 7% of the U.S. energy portfolio.
June 25, 2021: The dam plan that works for everyone (Trellis)
Sarah Golden discusses the Uncommon Dialogue and its potential impacts on the future of the nation's dams.
August 30, 2021: Improve or Remove: Funding for U.S. Dams (Stanford Report)
$2.3 billion to improve or remove U.S. dams included in new federal infrastructure bill in wake of a Stanford Uncommon Dialogue agreement.
May 6, 2021: Can hydropower help solve the climate crisis? (LA Times)
LA Times reports on $63-billion proposal for dam safety, rehabilitation and removal, federal agency support, and clean energy production.
October 13, 2020: Stanford’s Dan Reicher on new agreement on U.S. hydropower and river conservation (Stanford Report)
Q&A with Dan Reicher, Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
October 13, 2020: Environmentalists and dam operators, at war for years, start making peace (NY Times)
Facing a climate crisis, environmental groups and industry agree to work together to bolster hydropower while reducing harm from dams
2020: Balancing healthy rivers and hydropower
Message from William Robert Irvin, President of American Rivers, on the new agreement.
2020: A new uncommon collaboration on U.S. hydropower (NHA Blog)
Message from Malcolm Woolf, President and CEO of the National Hydropower Association, on the new agreement.