Posted on 05/28/2011 8:45:39 AM PDT by matt1234
The Elwha River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula once teemed with legendary salmon runs before two towering concrete dams built nearly a century ago cut off fish access to upstream habitat, diminished their runs and altered the ecosystem.
On June 1, nearly two decades after Congress called for full restoration of the river and its fish runs, federal workers will turn off the generators at the 1913 dam powerhouse and set in motion the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.
Contractors will begin dismantling the dams this fall, a $324.7 million project that will take about three years and eventually will allow the 45-mile Elwha River to run free as it courses from the Olympic Mountains through old-growth forests into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
"We're going to let this river be wild again," said Amy Kober, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group American Rivers. "The generators may be powering down, but the river is about to power up."
The 105-foot Elwha Dam also came on line in 1913, followed 14 years later by the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam eight miles upstream. For years, they provided electricity to a local pulp and paper mill and the growing city of Port Angeles, Wash., about 80 miles west of Seattle. Electricity from the dams _ enough to power about 1,700 homes _ currently feeds the regional power grid.
A Washington state law required fish passage facilities, but none was built. So all five native species of Pacific salmon and other anadromous fish that mature in the ocean and return to rivers to spawn were confined to the lower five miles of the river. A hatchery was built but lasted only until 1922.
(Excerpt) Read more at mynorthwest.com ...
Same here, and I live in Phoenix
There’s some evidence the dam is unstable.
"Dispensable" is one thing.
Expending $325 million in taxpayer dollars to dispense with them is another.
For some “odd” reason, hydro isn’t considered a renewable energy source.
The only way this kind of crap will fly is if the population of the U.S. is GREATLY reduced.
The watermelon’s ambition to restore the US to a landscape devoid of man, never stops. That is what blowing up the Mississippi levees was about, too.
Because our political and legal systems have been corrupt and infiltrated by our enemies and parasites, for a long, long, time.
Wind power kills birds..
your left with solar. but the panels are huge and ugly so nimby kicks in.
are candles still ok?
Then.... after they remove the dams, none of the fish will go UPSTREAM to spawn. They will return to where they were born, as you say, and that is not UPSTREAM.
SO...... removing these dams likely has nothing to do with the salmon, and more to do with some kind of real estate speculation, and having the government (citizens) pay for the removal of an old antiquated dam and power plant.
No you collect salmon eggs, you fertilizer them, you put them in the head waters above the current damn, they will return there to die, it has been proved several times already. There is a documentary on a restored river, and just like clock work the salmon returned. Look it up!!! I watched it several years ago.
” If you look into the back story of this project you will see that these particular antiquated dams have served their purpose and removing them is not an unreasonable thing to do at all”
Other than 325 million Tax payers dollars to do it.
I just want to make a couple of points:
1) Most of the salmon you get in the grocery store are farm raised (Atlantic salmon). And it may have been frozen, unless they specifically tell you it has been kept fresh. The greenies also fight every new salmon farm.
2) There are rivers on either side of the Elwa that never had a dam. Are they teaming with salmon?
3) The enviros have also shut down the hatcheries. So there isn’t a great surprise the salmon runs are down. A few years ago there was a big scandal as fishery employees we filmed clubbing returning hatchery salmon.
You make a good point but dams don’t come without maintenance costs either. You can’t just abandon them.
Were these dams any part of a flood control program? Just curious.
People living in a supposedly safe flood plain better sell now while they can still get a good price.
Understood. But they could continue to generate power indefinitely, I would imagine, which would more than pay for their maintenance costs.
The relatively ancient equipment probably installed in them, however, might belie that claim...
< /sarc >
As I said in #36 I am a long way from the Elwha and don't recall even passing over the bridge, but these Olympic rivers are in mountainous areas and generally reside within steep canyons (the river is also mostly within a national park). So there might be some flood control issues way downstream but not extensive ones. It dumps into the strait without much drama.
As would structural integrity issues that would require more debt to finance repairs and improvements.
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