Several years ago, when I first heard that the New Jersey chapter of The Nature Conservancy planned to remove a dam near the Delaware River, I thought, "Good luck with that."

No matter how sound the environmental reasons were for removing the aging and inefficient Columbia Dam, it's human nature for folks to get their backs up when there's change to the status quo.

But TNC worked with an array of terrific partners on all levels to make the project work for everyone and get all the approvals needed to take down the dam.

And as you can see from the videos above and below, the dam is disappearing.

More information about the dam removal and why it was needed is here.

Below is an aerial photo of the dam I took a few years ago with the help of LightHawk. The dam is in the lower right-hand corner (part of it looks like a large house extending into the water). You can see how close it is to the Delaware River.

And below is a shot I took of the dam itself. The dam prevented fish and eels from returning to their ancestral spawning grounds for more than a century.

(BTW, I'm on TNC's board in New Jersey -- that's how I got involved. And sorry about the old joke in the headline. Couldn't resist.)