FOREGROUND / WATER

JUNE 2014

A RIVER RETURNS JUNE 2013 THE REWILDING OF THE ELWHA. BY KATHARINE LOGAN Elwha Klallam Tribe in Port An- geles, traveled to the headwaters rom across the Strait of Juan de country in the early 1970s. “Gor- F Fuca, the mountains of Washing- geous!” he remembers thinking. ton’s Olympic Peninsula are always “Except—there’s no salmon.” The JAN. 2012 changing. They loom huge and sharp absence of salmon at the source and white, or float in a band of blue of the Elwha and throughout 90 haze. Some days they disappear alto- mountain ridges I had come to see. percent of the river habitat was due gether. On an April afternoon, under If not for the snow, I like to think I to two high dams that blocked their nearly every kind of cloud scudding might have glimpsed—but maybe it’s route upstream. The salmon have across the sky, I drove off the Port not possible—about 45 miles south begun gradually to move up again, Angeles ferry and up and around and a little west, the country where and the river is reasserting itself at the nearest mountain to a lookout the cascades of six glaciers form the its estuary since the last of the dams on Hurricane Ridge. There, at more headwaters of the Elwha River. was demolished in September 2014, ABOVE than 5,000 feet, one of those clouds freeing the Elwha River and generat- The former Lake Mills was snowing thick and fast, obscur- Robert Elofson, who is now the river ing massive ecological change on a reservoir’s revegetation. ing in its white hush the pleated restoration director for the Lower scale people seldom see. CHENOWETH JOSHUA

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STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA

PORT ANGELES

ELWHA DAM

LEFT The Elwha Dam VANCOUVER demolition. CANADA

UNITED STATES ELWHA RIVER

GLINES CANYON DAM N SEPT. 2011 DETAIL AT RIGHT SEATTLE O 1.25 2.5 5 MILES

The Elwha River once supported Elofson. “We had no say. But we electricity output: With the Olympic stocks of all the anadromous salmo- knew it was bad.” Peninsula connected to the power nid species native to the Pacific North- grid, the dams provided very little of west. An estimated 400,000 fish The annual salmon populations were the power the region used.

OCT. 2011 teemed upriver annually to spawn, trapped in the lower five miles of a including large-bodied spring chi- river starved of sediment, nutrients, In 1992, Congress passed the El- nook weighing as much as a hundred woody debris, and even water itself. wha River Ecosystem and Fisheries pounds. In the lower river, salmon Fish numbers plummeted from Restoration Act, enabling the larg- sometimes thronged so thick the Klal- nearly 400,000 to less than 3,000, est dam removal project in history. lam fishers didn’t have to catch them; with stocks of some species falling Almost a decade passed in political they just had to startle the fish, and almost to zero. Downstream, the skirmishing, locally and in Wash- some would ride aground. Salmon complex ecosystem of the estuary ington, D.C., before a senator who provided food for hundreds of kinds eroded to bare cobbles. For the tribe was blocking funding for the project of animals in the river’s ecosystem, this ecological devastation destroyed was voted out of office. In September JAN. 2012 and for the forest itself, as salmon- the livelihood that had sustained the 2011, demolition began. By Septem- borne nutrients nourished trees miles Klallam people for thousands of years ber 2014, both dams were down, from the river’s edge. and lay at the heart of their culture. and, for the first time in more than 100 years, the Elwha River ran free. In the early 20th century, that In the decades that followed, tribal changed. In 1911 and 1927, private elders continued to voice objections The dams’ removal marked the end companies constructed two hydro- to the dams, and when relicensing of a struggle but by no means the electric dams across the river, five requirements brought the dams end of the story. The Elwha restora- and 13 miles from the river’s mouth, under scrutiny in the latter third of tion is the second-largest ecosystem which is about five miles west of Port the century, the tribe intervened. restoration project in the history of APR. 2012 Angeles. The first dam was 108 feet The first blow to the dams came the national park system after the high, and the second one was 210 when part of the foundation at the Florida Everglades, and it’s unlike feet high. Together the dams flooded lower dam gave way. Second, the anything attempted before. nearly 800 acres of the river valley, dams had conspicuously failed to including the site of the tribe’s cre- provide required fish passage, and “This is an enormous chance to ation story, and barred the salmon with 83 percent of the river basin study a complete restoration pro- from more than 90 percent of their lying within the Olympic National cess,” Elofson says. spawning habitat. Park, an increasing number of en- vironmentalists joined the cause. Different parts of the river’s ecosys- “Nobody knew about the plan to put The third strike was the diminish- tem are changing at different rates. JUNE 2012

a dam there until it happened,” says ing economic utility of the dams’ The inorganic components that MAPS ASLA, KATSMA, KATARINA (SERIES); LEFT SERVICE, PARK NATIONAL THE WITH COLLABORATION IN SYSTEMS VIDEO ERDMAN

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SEPT. 2011 JUNE 2012

ABOVE define the landscape’s form have cubic meters, had backed up behind tional Park Service, based in Port The former Lake changed faster than the rest, and are the dams. When the dams were re- Angeles. “There are no primary suc- Aldwell reservoir. expected to settle down faster, too, moved, and the river cut through cessional landscapes out there with BELOW says Jonathan Warrick, a research ge- the former lake beds to find its new five feet of silt like we have on the The Glines Dam demolition. ologist with the U.S. Geological Sur- channel, it carried 13 million cubic valley walls. And there are no sand vey. “The river has been very efficient meters of sediment down to the es- and gravel terraces instantly perched BOTTOM RIGHT The dam stub, in moving sediment,” he says, “and tuary in a series of chocolate milk above a riverbed.” now a lookout point. we’re seeing new, emergent land- torrents, leaving the remainder of scapes throughout the system—in the sediment perched in terraces 20 So the revegetation team’s strategy was the reservoirs, throughout the river to 60 feet above the riverbed. simply to plant out some 400,000 corridor below, and into the coast.” plants of 80 early successional native That gave the revegetation team a lot species, without any assumptions as Upstream from the dam sites, those to think about. to what would thrive, running the 800 formerly inundated acres have program over seven years to give the resurfaced but are nothing like what “There aren’t any analogues to these site time to teach them. they were before. A century’s worth conditions,” says Joshua Chenoweth, of sediment, more than 21 million a restoration botanist with the Na- Chenoweth calls the results of the re- SEPT. 2011 vegetation effort so far “a tale of two surfaces,” and, from a windy outlook on a stub of the upper dam, it’s easy to see why. The forest edge defines the old lake level like a vast bathtub ring. Within that, the valley walls are a clear success. A 92 percent survival rate for plantings, helped by plentiful wind-borne reseeding from the adjacent forest, has greened JAN. 2012 the silted slopes with alder, willow, cottonwood, and little Douglas firs.

“It actually turned out to be a re- ally good site,” Chenoweth says. So much so that the revegetation of the valley walls will complete a year ahead of schedule.

The instant, perched terraces are OCT. 2012 APR. 2015

another story. High above the water RIGHT BOTTOM SERVICE, PARK NATIONAL (SERIES); LEFT BOTTOM SERVICE, PARK NATIONAL THE WITH COLLABORATION IN SYSTEMS VIDEO ERDMAN RIGHT; AND LEFT TOP CHENOWETH, JOSHUA

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level, far from the forest edge, with creeping up since the dams came More used to the ocean, I find the no soil to speak of, only lupines are down. Over the course of the 20th fast-flowing water fascinates me and really thriving. Great big Seussian century, river management practices makes me a bit uneasy at the same tufts of them are springing up, fix- of burning and clearing logjams and time. I stood back from the edge and ing their own nitrogen, setting flow- bulldozing the river channel com- looked around. Positioned at inter- ers, and scattering seed. Among the pounded the dams’ impact on wa- vals on both sides of the river was lupines, a few cottonwoods, ocean ter, sediment, and wood starvation. a series of giant wooden artifacts: spray, and snowberries are holding The tribe’s fisheries habitat manager, intriguing, strangely beautiful, not- on, but the terraces are still 80 per- Mike McHenry, says those practices quite-natural structures. They are cent bare ground. grossly simplified the channel of the engineered logjams, McHenry said, lower Elwha. and they are making a significant They may be slow going, but Che- difference to salmon habitat in the noweth is confident that in time the To help restore fish habitat, the tribe lower river. terraces will establish themselves as has been carrying out remediation a viable ecosystem. They’ll be differ- downstream from the dams. I fol- The idea for engineered logjams on ent: “We’ve always thought that this lowed McHenry a couple of miles the Elwha came from a study on an- would potentially lead to novel eco- along a track that runs on top of other river that showed the biggest, systems,” he says. “As long as they’re a dike and then across the flood- most stable old trees were actually BELOW native, as long as they’re forest, from plain, until we came to a sandy clear- growing on buried older logjams. “So More than 50 engineered a veg perspective, that’s fine.” ing. “This was a construction site,” there was this aha moment of real- logjams downstream of McHenry said. I asked what it was izing that we need the wood to grow the former dam sites are contributing to the From a fish perspective, the outlook for. “You’ll see.” And we walked the the forests that are going to replenish restoration of the lower river. is less certain, although numbers are last few yards to the river’s edge. the river over time,” McHenry said. BOTTOM DESIGN, SYSTEMS ABBE/NATURAL TIM TOP; SERVICE, PARK NATIONAL RITCHIE, ANDY

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RIFFLE

BAR

CHANNEL WIDENING “We started asking what we could LEFT do to replace the lost wood. And we FLOW POOL Before demolition, came up with these engineering so- an artificially simplified channel; lutions to re-create logjams.” after demolition, BAR braiding of the river The tribe has been building logjams as it re-engages since 2000, when the dam remov- RIFFLE its floodplain. als were still uncertain. There are now more than 50 logjams along a three-mile reach of the lower river, making this one of the largest ef- forts of its type in the world. We can spreading the river out, reconnect- says McHenry, “and dip into one expect to see more of them in the ing it to its floodplain. Overflow and of these things, and you’ll just see Pacific Northwest, McHenry says, ancillary channels have already be- clouds of salmon.” as a movement toward rewilding gun to braid the river through gravel landscapes gathers momentum. bars, creating complex new habitat. A bend or two beyond the last of the logjams, the river flows into the Strait Besides providing hard points in the At a finer scale, the river swirling of Juan de Fuca. Of the 21 million floodplain to nurse a new cycle of against each logjam creates scour cubic meters of material once backed tree growth, the engineered logjams pools, which provide essential places up behind the dams, the river has are supporting the river’s recovery for fish to hide, for adult fish to hold, transported about 60 percent of it to in the short term. By jiggering the and for juvenile fish to rear. “Put a the river’s mouth, building a massive

ANDY RITCHIE, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, TOP; TIM ABBE/NATURAL SYSTEMS DESIGN, BOTTOM DESIGN, SYSTEMS ABBE/NATURAL TIM TOP; SERVICE, PARK NATIONAL RITCHIE, ANDY water’s straight run, the logjams are mask and snorkel on at low flow,” new coastal estuary out into the sea,

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MAR. 2005 SEPT. 2013

APR. 2012

ABOVE and creating new underwater land- about the edges of sandbars, which TON. ENGINEERING U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE The transformation scapes on the sea floor kilometers have created wide new mudflats be- INTERIOR | BUREAU OF RECLAMATION. GEN- of the estuary: from the mouth. hind. I spotted two semipalmated ERAL CONTRACTOR BARNARD CONSTRUCTION, Top left is before BOZEMAN, MONTANA. REVEGETATION CLIENTS demolition. plovers with the mudflats to them- (FORMER LAKE MILLS) OLYMPIC NATIONAL “We really are at the beginning,” selves. On the other side of the river, PARK, PORT ANGELES, WASHINGTON; (FOR- BELOW Warrick says. “We’ve just given birth a flock of gulls lifted into the air. Oth- MER LAKE ALDWELL) LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM Maps show the to this new system, and we’re watch- erwise, this magnificent new land lay TRIBE, PORT ANGELES, WASHINGTON. PART- NERS WASHINGTON CONSERVATION CORPS, geomorphic evolution ing it evolve in front of our eyes.” quiet, ready for life to return. of the Elwha delta as OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON; STUDENT CONSERVA- TION ASSOCIATION, SEATTLE; WASHINGTON’S the river transported KATHARINE LOGAN IS A BRITISH COLUMBIA- NATIONAL PARK FUND, SEATTLE. RESTORATION 13 million cubic meters On the final morning of my visit, I BASED WRITER WITH A FOCUS ON DESIGN FOR BOTANISTS OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, PORT of sediment to the stepped over the crest of a dune onto SUSTAINABILITY. SHE HOLDS A PROFESSIONAL ANGELES, WASHINGTON. PLANT NURSERY MATT river mouth. the new beach. The estuary seems DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURE. ALBRIGHT NATIVE PLANT NURSERY, AGNEW, to stretch for miles, and there’s not a WASHINGTON. ENGINEERED LOGJAMS CLIENT bare cobble in sight. It’s impossible LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM TRIBE, PORT ANGE- Project Credits LES, WASHINGTON. ENGINEERING NATURAL to imagine all this was created in ELWHA RIVER RESTORATION CLIENT NATIONAL SYSTEMS DESIGNS, SEATTLE. CONSTRUCTION a geological instant. The new sand PARK SERVICE. KEY PARTNERS LOWER ELWHA LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM TRIBE RESTORATION KLALLAM TRIBE, THE CITY OF PORT ANGELES, is strewn with woody debris, some CREW, PORT ANGELES, WASHINGTON. MAJOR CLALLAM COUNTY, BUREAU OF RECLAMATION, of it ocean bleached, but most of it FUNDING NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMO- U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE, NATIONAL dark from the river, a rotted pinecone SPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, SALMON RECOV- MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE, U.S. ARMY CORPS ERY FUNDING BOARD, PACIFIC COAST SALMON among the smaller stuff offering -ex OF ENGINEERS. DEMOLITION CLIENT OLYMPIC RECOVERY FUND. tra proof. Waves from the strait eddy NATIONAL PARK, PORT ANGELES, WASHING-

AUG. 2011 MAR. 2013 SEPT. 2013 APR. 2014 SEPT. 2014 JAN. 2015 JONATHAN FELIS, USGS, TOP LEFT; IAN MILLER, WASHINGTON SEA GRANT, BOTTOM LEFT; NEAL AND LINDA CHISM, LIGHTHAWK, TOP RIGHT; USGS, BOTTOM USGS, RIGHT; TOP LIGHTHAWK, CHISM, LINDA AND NEAL LEFT; BOTTOM GRANT, SEA WASHINGTON MILLER, IAN LEFT; TOP USGS, FELIS, JONATHAN

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