![]() ![]() In 1992, the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act provided for the restoration of the Elwha through the removal of its two dams. But today, the two dams provide less than half the power needed by a local paper mill. Power generated by the 210-foot high Glines Canyon Dam, built further upstream in 1927, supported additional economic growth on the Olympic Peninsula. ![]() The 108-foot high Elwha Dam, completed in 1913, was constructed to supply power to the city of Port Angeles and a lumber mill. The indigenous Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, whose creation site was flooded when the dams were built and who once depended on the salmon for survival, opposed the dams from the beginning. Even if expensive fish passages had been added to the dams to help salmon migrate upstream, the dams’ other environmental effects would still have prevented the salmon species from recovering. ![]() Before the dams were built, 400,000 salmon returned to the river to spawn each year, but now fewer than 3,000 return to the 5 miles of habitat that lie below the first dam-90% of their native habitat is unreachable. The river is home to all five species of Pacific salmon, including Chinook, Coho, Chum, Sockeye and Pink, and three species of trout. Most of the 45-mile long Elwha River, which flows into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is located in Washington’s Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula. history, it is just one of several major dam removals planned for this year that exemplify the growing river restoration movement. While this is the largest dam removal project in U.S. 17, 2011, the removal of two large hydroelectric dams on the Elwha River in Washington State, which have blocked migrating salmon from reaching their spawning grounds for almost 100 years, will begin. ![]()
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