Hydroelectric power plants generally can be classified as the run-of-river plant, storage-type plant, and the pumped-storage plant. The run-of-river plant is suitable for the stream which has abundant water even during the dry season. Since Taiwan has few sustained rivers with abundant flow, most hydroelectric power plants are storage-type or pumped-storage plants that need building dams to impound water for use. When planning or evaluating a hydropower project, most of the decision-makers pay much attention to the quantitatively measurable costs for the project including the construction costs of a reservoir, the generation power plant, system utilities, and the economic efficiency for operation, etc. Consequently, the environmental expense, which can not be measured in money terms, is easy to be ignored all the time by the project planner. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the necessity of environmental considerations in planning stage and during the construction and operation of dams for hydropower purpose. We also enumerate here the environmental consequences from several dams built in Taiwan.
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