Few people are left alive today who have seen the wild Elwha River on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. It has been dammed and silted up for more than a century. But later this month, once the last blasts are completed on the world’s largest dam removal project, a new generation will see a river reborn and untamed.
In 1913, the Elwha Dam was built with the noble and progressive purpose of generating clean and cheap electricity for paper mills in Port Angeles, Wash. Later, in 1927, the much larger Glines Canyon Dam was built 13 miles upstream, also for generating hydro power for the growing pulp industry.
The dams operated efficiently for decades — creating Lake Aldwell and Lake Mills, respectively — and were considered symbols of mankind’s control of nature. But the effects on wildlife were devastating.
Before the dams, the Elwha was one of the most productive salmon runs in the state, with as many as 300,000 chinook, coho, chum, pink, and sockeye salmon spawning along the river’s 70-mile length each year, as well as home to thousands more steelhead, cutthroat and bull trout.
After the dams were built, without modern fish ladders, salmon runs plummeted by 99 percent as returning fish could only navigate 5 miles upstream before hitting concrete. This put many of the fishermen of the Lower Elwha Klallam Native American tribe out of business and closed the local smokehouse.
Slowly, attitudes about the Elwah River and dams in general began to change. In the 1980s, critics said the dams were no longer needed because the Olympic Peninsula had long before been integrated with the regional power grid. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and other environmental groups petitioned the National Park Service to study the the feasibility of their removal.
Finally, the Park Service was persuaded. The Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act of 1992 set aside $350 million in federal funds to remove the dams in gradual phases so that the estimated 18 million cubic yards of sediment that had built up behind the dams could be drawn down naturally and wildlife would be disturbed as little as possible. Demolition began in 2011.
After three years and thousands of tons of dynamite, the Elwha Dam and Lake Aldwell are now just memories. Final demolition work on the last 35 feet of the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam — taller than Niagara Falls — should be completed this month. (Click here to see time-lapse videos of the removal process.)
The former Lake Mills that was held behind the taller dam is now an exposed, muddy valley again, littered with old, giant stumps from 19th century logging operations. In short time, the mudflats of the old lake bottom will return to the former riparian forest habitat. Already, small shrubs and saplings are sprouting forth, reclaiming the land.
What’s most impressive, though, is the rapid return of the salmon. At the river’s delta, a century’s worth of mud and silt has been washed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca over the last three years, building up ancient riverbanks and providing new spawning habitat.
As of last fall, local biologists counted more than 3,500 adult chinook salmon swimming as far as the base of the Glines Canyon Dam. It was the largest salmon run in decades.
A River Runs Through It… Again
An unprecedented dam removal project in Washington state nears completion,
ushers back salmon runs
By Randy Woods
The demolition of the Glines Canyon Dam (above) is expected to be completed this month, while the Elwha Dam (at right), farther downstream, is already gone.
Photos courtesy of the National Park Service