Thank you skyper, that is fascinating!
At a minimum, all of the ways I’m touching will still be tagged as ArtificialPaths, so they could still be deleted in the future if that is what is decided. One issue with this particular import, is in some places the ArtificialPath is sticking out of the body of water before meeting a stream. A solution could be to connect the existing streams to the body of water and delete the ArtificialPath. But since these ways already exist, I thought it safer to connect and re-tag them instead.
But if I’m wrong, re-tagging or deleting the ways inside water bodies will still be possible.