Last week, the long-anticipated removal of
two dams on Washington’s Elwha River took a giant step closer
to reality when the state Department of Ecology gave the project
the go-ahead.
The dams’ removal will help
floundering salmon populations. Prior to their construction in the
early 1900s, all five Pacific salmon species had spawned
prolifically in the Elwha. Within 20 years of dam removal, says Amy
Kober, Northwest communications director for American Rivers,
hundreds of thousands of salmon are expected to once again travel
up the river. And those salmon runs should help the endangered
Puget Sound orcas that feed on the fish. “Restoring this
river,” says Kober, “is going to have
reverberations… through the entire Puget Sound
ecosystem.”
Breaching
plans have been in the works for years, as we reported in
2001. Responding to growing concerns about vanishing salmon,
Congress passed the Elwha River Restoration Act in 1992. It
authorized the Interior Department to acquire the dams and remove
them. Funding, however, lagged behind. It wasn’t until 2000
that the federal government finally purchased the Lower Elwha Dam
and Glines Canyon Dam, which sits inside Olympic National Park.
The next stage of work will begin in the coming months,
once the Army Corps of Engineers issues the final permit. Before
the dams come down, mitigation projects must be completed to
protect downstream water treatment plants and fish hatcheries from
sediment released during dam removal. Federal funding has already
been appropriated for those projects.
Actual dam
deconstruction should begin in 2009. The upper dam, at 210 feet,
will be the highest ever breached in the nation.
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