Who gets the land?
Today's story in the Peninsula Daily News explores the options, and notes that the public will certainly get a say in the decision.
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The removal of two dams from Washington's Elwha River will be one of the most significant environmental restoration efforts of our time. Call it destruction in the name of creation -- when the dams are gone, salmon will once again return to the wild heart of Olympic National Park.
-- President Teddy Roosevelt, 1908
Before Elwha Dam and Glines Canyon Dam blocked the river coho, pink, chum, sockeye, spring and summer/fall chinook salmon returned by the hundreds of thousands. Individual chinook sometimes weighed over 100 pounds. I've read that the salmon were so big that people could wear their skins as ceremonial robes.
Since the early 1900's the dams have prevented salmon from reaching roughly 70 miles of upstream habitat in the Elwha River and its tributaries. The dams have also inundated 684 acres of riverside habitat -- important for wildlife like deer and Roosevelt elk -- beneath the reservoirs of Lake Mills and Lake Aldwell.
Today, only about 4,000 salmon spawn in the five miles of available river below the dams. Other wildlife, like the bald eagle, black bear, bobcat, coyote, raccoon, weasel, mink and river otter are suffering from the lack of nutrient-rich salmon carcasses.
Removing the two dams on the Elwha will be about salmon, and much more than salmon -- it will be restoration of an ecosystem on a grand scale.
Today the Seattle Times is running a front page story with great color photos, announcing the signing of the agreement to allow the $182 million dam removal project to move forward.
Read the story
Removal of the two dams will begin in 2008 -- between now and then, work must be completed on a water treatment plant for the town of Port Angeles, and a sewer system, flood protection levee, and fish hatchery for the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation.
When the dams are finally out, salmon will be able to return to their upstream spawning grounds in Olympic National Park for the first time in 100 years.