MAKING WAVES, June 2004 issue: Table of Contents     
Elwha Dam photos
Elwha Restoration Project Makes Slow Progress

By Ian Miller

In 1913, a 108-foot-tall hydro-electric dam was completed on the Elwha River, just west of the town of Port Angeles on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The dam was built 4.9 miles from the salt water of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and, while a boon for the local economy, the dam also served to block both the upward migration of anadramous fish and the downward migration of sediments to the coast. In 1927, a second dam was completed eight miles up the river from the Elwha Dam. This arch-dam was built to a height of 210 feet and, like the lower dam, served a primary function of power generation.


Over time, the river’s renowned runs of salmon diminished and one species, Sockeye, was extirpated from the river entirely. The shoreline east of the river was starved of sediment, precipitating erosion-control projects for miles along the coast. Joe Schmitt, the chairman of the Clallam County Marine Resource Committee and a lifelong resident of Clallam County, recounts that he first heard the idea of removing the two Elwha Dams talked about as far back as 1959.

Regardless of when it was first proposed, the concept of removing the Elwha’s two dams caught on. On October 24, 1992, President H.W. Bush signed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act as Public Law 102-495, which mandated the restoration of the Elwha Ecosystem and named Olympic National Park as the project manager. In 2000, after eight years of political negotiations and deals, the dams, formerly privately owned, were purchased by the federal government, and planning for the removal was started in earnest. Removal is currently scheduled to begin in 2007.


  

Over two days in early March 2004, the Clallam County Marine Resource Committee, with the support of a variety of agencies and organizations, including the Surfrider Foundation, spearheaded a workshop designed to develop a management, monitoring and restoration plan for the nearshore around the Elwha River mouth. The workshop brought together academics, government scientists and coastal activists to examine opportunities presented by the dams’ removal. The project has incredible potential to restore miles of sand beach habitat, restore a functioning estuary at the mouth of the Elwha river, and nourish many of the surf breaks along the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

The workshop also illustrated the project’s shortcomings. With removal scheduled to begin only three years from now, this was the first time that there was an organized large-scale effort to examine near-shore impacts. We were able to identify numerous opportunities for research, monitoring and restoration­­but will we have the time to put together the partnerships, gather the funding and implement these initiatives? A consistent issue identified in the workshop was funding for restoration and management of the coastal areas affected by the dams’ removal. The original 1992 law and subsequent appropriations have provided little money for research or monitoring. With almost all of the funding having been dedicated to studying in-river impacts, the coast has received little attention.

To learn more about this project, visit the Elwha Restoration Project website at http://www.nps.gov/olym/elwha/home.htm.

Additionally, information on the workshop will be posted to the Clallam County Marine Resource Committee’s website at http://www.clallammrc.org/CCMRC. To get involved, contact Ian Miller, the Surfrider Foundation’s Washington Field Coordinator, at imiller@surfrider.org.


All photos on this page are courtesy of National Park Service