A (free-flowing) river runs through it

Humankind has used the productive capacity of rivers since the dawn of civilization, be it for transportation, power, or sustenance. But human utilization of these ecosystem services provided by rivers historically has relied on engineered structures that have transformed fluvial landscapes into hardscapes. In a recent paper published in Ecosystem Services, a team of researchers from Colorado State University argues that water management decisions should start taking into account the benefits yielded from free-flowing rivers. In a review of existing literature, they present powerful evidence that supports the necessity and usefulness of accounting for the loss of benefits provided by free-flowing rivers when building engineered structures in riverbeds.
 
According to the authors' review, free-flowing rivers offer numerous benefits — including recreation, aesthetics, and water quality advantages — that need to be properly identified before making decisions about how best to use rivers. For example, while hydrologic services such as irrigation are usually part of existing water management frameworks, the loss of naturally derived benefits, such as bank stabilization or nutrient cycling, are rarely taken into account in payment for ecosystem services schemes. Particularly, they argue that recognizing and integrating the cost of losing ecosystem services from free-flowing rivers would strengthen the understanding of the benefits of infrastructure decommissioning and river restoration.
 
The team cites numerous studies that quantify benefits from free-flowing rivers. For instance, one study found significant willingness to pay for river restoration through water bill surcharges, ranging from $19 to $70 million dollars in aggregate in a watershed. Another study found that U.S. residents would be willing to pay between $3 and $6 billion dollars for improved services from dam removal and fisheries. Such quantitative assessments help scientists uncover real and perceived benefits from keeping habitat intact and preserving fluvial morphology.
 
The authors highlight some of the difficulties in integrating the cost of losing free-flowing rivers within existing frameworks. For example, analyses can be complicated by the fact that those places that bear the burden of losing a free-flowing river are distinct from the places where the benefits of irrigation are realized. However, they posit that solutions exist. For instance, water quality, quantity, and timing could be used as basic indicators of the level of services produced by free-flowing rivers, including biological services. If water management professionals and policy makers are to rely on good science to make tradeoff decisions about water infrastructure, they should no longer ignore the loss of benefits derived from free-flowing rivers.