The Elwha River flows through an old dam site. In the background, young alder trees bloom in what was once a reservoir, and the green mound in the foreground indicates the location of the old dam walls.
Fiona Skeggs/ MEDILL
The Elwha River flows through the old dam site. In the background young alder trees bloom in what was once a reservoir and the green mound in the foreground indicates the location of the old dam walls.
Walking down the hill from a parking lot on the outskirts of Port Angeles, Washington, the sound of rushing water gets louder. The powerful turquoise waters of the Elwha River flow through a deep crevasse in the rock and toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the far side of the gully, a large grass-covered mound sits where the 105-foot Elwha Dam once stood. A handful of giant wooden stakes protruding from the granite below remain the only remnants of the dam.
Rob Elofson, an elder from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, points beyond the mound where young alder trees stand out against the mature Douglas firs behind them, pale white branches against a deep green canvas. He says the whole area of alder forest used to be underwater—a vast reservoir behind the dam.
Back at the top of the hill, the Elwha Dam Interpretive Site tells the dam’s history from its construction in 1912 to its deconstruction in 2012 to the present day. Elofson and fellow tribal elder Russ Hepfer remember the first day of dam removal.
“There was Coho salmon below the dam that you could see bumping their noses on the structure,” says Hepfer. “If the dam wasn’t there, they’d have been going upstream.”
It’s been nearly ten years since the Elwha River Dam, the first and largest dam removal project in the United States to date, was deconstructed. Now, fish are returning to the river.
For the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the river restoration biologists, and the people of Port Angeles who campaigned for dam removal, the day the concrete rained down and the river began to flow freely was historic and celebratory. Much has changed in the decade since.
“It’s been a lot of fun watching the recovery unfold,” says Mike McHenry, fish habitat manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who has worked on restoration projects on the Elwha River since 1989.
McHenry says the dam removal immediately transformed the river estuary, where approximately 3.5 million cubic yards of sediment were deposited five miles downstream of the dam.
This, along with changes in water level, flow, and vegetation, took several years to stabilize, McHenry says, delaying the recovery of many fish species in the river. He says the Elwha is half-way to full recovery, which will occur when the fish populations shift from predominantly relying on hatcheries to naturally spawning.
But McHenry doesn’t think the current fish populations are ready for harvesting. “We’re still in what we’re calling the recolonization phase,” he says. “Where fish are getting into their historic habitats.” Predictions made before dam removal estimate a twenty- to thirty-year recovery period before fish populations are thought to be stable enough for harvesting.
“There might be some ceremonial fish made available,” says McHenry, referring to the First Salmon Ceremony when tribal members honor and respect the returning Chinook salmon.
As naturally spawned Coho salmon return to the river, Chinook—a salmon of considerable cultural and commercial significance—still largely depend on hatchery production. But McHenry believes Chinook of natural origin should start returning this year based on juvenile numbers from previous years.
Another species flourishing is the Sockeye salmon. Extirpated by dam construction, natural recolonization of Sockeyes from Vancouver Island populations are now being found in the river.
The United States houses more than 90,000 dams, according to the National Inventory of Dams, most of which were built during a prolific construction boom in the early 1900s. Today, many of these dams are obsolete and no longer serve the purposes for which they were built.
“People tend to view dams as forever monoliths,” McHenry says. “But they have a lifespan. They fill with sediment, or they outlive their usefulness, or they’re removed for environmental reasons.”
“We’re going to be challenged to continue this baseline work into the future.”
Built without a fish passage, the Elwha Dam made more than 90 percent of river habitat inaccessible. Sediment buildup behind the towering dam walls starved the lower riverbeds of suitable spawning habitat. Projects to straighten the lower river channels sped up the flow and further exacerbated the problem.
Constructed to support the Port Angeles timber mills the Elwha dam, and the 210-foot Glines Canyon dam seven miles upstream, was supplying less than 50 percent of power to the mills and, as an aging structure, had become unsafe. This was the turning point for the removal campaign. The Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act of 1992 concluded dam removal as the best way to restore the fish populations in the river. And the long and arduous process began.
“Removal itself is pretty easy,” Hepfer says. “You just tear it down.” But he notes that it took twenty years to get the Congressional support needed to begin deconstruction.
For more than 100 years, a water reservoir sat behind the dam, only lowering slightly when the gates were opened during high flow. After machinery breached the dam, the water level dropped, and the reservoir emptied. Plants and trees were quick to grow in the re-exposed ground.
Before dam removal got the green light, McHenry and his team were looking for techniques to improve fish spawning habitats on the Elwha and decided to install engineered log jams in the upper reaches of the river. The jams simulate natural structures destroyed through logging, erosion, and rushing water flow. The log jams survived dam removal and continue to provide vital habitat to recovering fish populations.
McHenry says he hopes revegetation will be complete over the next decade and that the tribe will have gained ownership of the old reservoir land. But continued monitoring and yearly evaluation of fish populations prior to harvesting will rely on project funding and resources, which McHenry says end this year.
“We’re going to be challenged to continue this baseline work into the future,” McHenry said during a Peninsula College webinar.
Both McHenry and Hepfer have liaised with those involved with dam removal projects on the Klamath and Snake rivers, with some delegations visiting the Elwha site. Demolition of one of four dams slated for removal on the Klamath River, in California, is scheduled to begin in 2023 and will open up 420 miles of watershed habitat.
“We’re anxious to get back in there,” says Hepfer, who hopes the tribe will be able to resume traditional harvesting of Coho salmon next year, with populations evaluated each year to determine if they are at sustainable levels.
“But now the river is alive, and fish are coming back,” he says. “We’ll start fishing again. We’ll all be happy.”