Yeah the biggest downside is the ecological impact of the flooding involved in creating a new hydro source. They could maybe look at retrofitting it onto an existing hydroelectric dam so it's not flooding a new area.
It still needs volume to flood to hold the water though and unless we're building up artificially the cheap way to do that is to build fairly wide. All that area is habitat and covering it has an impact. In the end it's probably well worth it so long as we're not destroying rare habitats to do it but it is still destruction that has to be considered and weighed.
