1,000 years ago, the Domesday Book had over 5,000 entries for watermills across England. These provided energy for milling, iron forging and textile manufacture. Today hydro power can be exploited for the production of electricity, capturing the energy in flowing water, by means of powering a generator. Although these schemes are theoretically one of the greenest ways to produce electricity, they do have associated environmental impacts. The most obvious impact of dam schemes is the flooding of vast areas of land, leading to the loss of agricultural and forestry land.
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