Finding the River: An Environmental History of the Elwha

Introduction: Find the River: The Present and Historical Elwha

1 Introduction Find the River THE PRESENT AND HISTORICAL ELWHA The ocean is the river’s goal from “Find the River” REM To hikers moving up the Elwha River from the Whiskey Bend trailhead , the river is a teasing presence, lying far below, with the trail providing occasional glimpses. But upon reaching Hume’s Ranch and breaking from the trail down to the river itself, the sound gathers up, compelling an increase in gait as the river draws near. And what you see is worth the sweat you have produced by this point. The Elwha’s beauty could serve as a model, an icon, of Pacific Northwest rivers. The deep green pools; the wide gravel beds with rich, aerated riffles; the variety of cobble and larger rocks in the riverbed—all suggest a perfect Pacific Northwest river, one that should roil with bright red and green-hued spawning salmon. The fog coiling down from the mountainsides and the bent branch of a hemlock or cedar dipping in a quiet pool, being tugged by the river, seemingly forever without end, create an image and place of Zen-like solace and beauty. In these moments and places, contemplation leads one to wonder at the past of this river and its inhabitants, and at possibilities. The section of river described here is located within the Olympic National Park and was upstream of two aging dams. The Elwha Dam was built in 1913 and the Glines Canyon Dam, in 1927. Approximately five miles upstream of the river mouth on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Elwha Dam was remarkably primitive looking, nothing like the monolithic Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia Finding the River: An Environmental History of the Elwha 2 River or Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Squat, covered in moss, and leaking in multiple locations, the Elwha Dam looked its age, like an antique of early Pacific Northwest industrialization. The Glines Canyon Dam was built eight and a half miles upstream of the first dam, and was more elegant in construction, reflecting improvements in dam engineering. Olympic Peninsula and Elwha River watershed. Map is courtesy of the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Marine Fisheries Service, “NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFSNWFSC-90, Elwha River Fish Restoration Plan, Developed Pursuant to the Elwha River, Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, Public Law 102-495,” April 2008. Introduction: Find the River 3 The lower dam immediately blocked the spawning migrations of salmon and steelhead. As one wades the riffles, fishes the pools, and explores the Elwha and its tributaries above the dams, it becomes clear that the salmon and steelhead are absent. Biologically speaking, the river is a shadow of its former self. Before the Elwha Dam was built, the river produced approximately 400,000 salmon and steelhead a year, with some chinook weighing over 100 pounds. It is an odd experience to be deep in the Elwha River valley, surrounded by healthy forest, viewing a clean and healthy river ecosystem, and comprehend the diminished river.1 While magnificent, beautiful, and even transcendent, the river exudes a fundamental emptiness that is the legacy of settlement and development—a legacy specifically due to the two aging dams and the historical and economic processes that culminated in their construction, blocking determined salmon from moving further upstream into healthy and available salmon habitat. Hope among environmentalists for the restoration of the Elwha’s native runs was kindled in the early 1990s, when President George H. W. Bush signed landmark legislation to restore the Elwha River and its salmon fisheries, including removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams if necessary. The legislation was unprecedented; the political dissonance that accompanied it was not. Conflict and resistance derailed the river restoration effort, and appropriations were dispensed slowly. In spite of all this, the dams began to come down in September 2011. What sort of river is this now? More important, what is the “best” Elwha River? One that resembles its historical self, rolling free with potential prolific salmon runs, or an organic machine, providing necessary power for economic development and jobs? How is it possible that a dam constructed in 1913 to bring “civilization” and wealth to the Olympic Peninsula could be slated for removal a mere 80 years later, after only two generations? What drove American environmental attitudes to change dramatically between the time when the first dam was built...