With their campaign to remove dams entitled "Rivers Unplugged", American Rivers, an organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of rivers in the United States, advocates the removal of "Dams that Don't Make Sense". That term is used to identify those dams that no longer serve a purpose or where the costs outweigh the benefits.
The following criteria are used by American Rivers and British Columbia's Outdoor Recreation Council to identify and categorize dams that don't make sense.

• Structural safety as dam structures age and weaken, some dams become unsafe to operate.

• Reservoir siltation siltation will reduce the dam's ability to store water and produce electricity.

• Marginal benefits poor design, inefficient turbines, or changing societal needs have made some old dams obsolete.

• Economic costs marginal dams cost money to maintain while providing little or no benefit to society.

• Ecological damage the damage caused to fish and other river-dependant animals makes some dams difficult if not impossible to justify from any perspective.

For any or all of the above reasons owners have abandoned dams, leaving others with the burden of removing them. These abandoned structures pose a threat to public safety and continue to damage the ecosystem in which they are situated.