full-tilt, could power a city the size of Seattle.
Currently, though, the dams provide just
4.3 percent of the region’s power.
Dismantling the structures might be
24 turbines in the lower Snake system has
exceeded its 50-year life span. The Corps
signed a $115 million contract in 2016 to in-
stall three at Ice Harbor Dam. Meanwhile,
30 percent since 2008, making Bonneville
Energy Coalition, an alliance of 100 public
needed infrastructure would add just $2 to
customers’ monthly utility bills.
Simpson of Idaho called for a serious look
at it, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed
legislation allocating $750,000 to study how
who favor breaching the barriers agree that
unleashing the river will cool the water, cre-
ate more spawning habitat, and give the
imperiled creatures better odds of survival.
And that, they say, can only help the Snake
overall. “I hope those dams come down,”
Jones says. “I’d love to see it in my lifetime.
Every species that can get to the river and
catch a fish is going to thrive.”
are just a few months old, and before long,
they will begin their journey to the sea.
McHenry releases the dog, and she bounds
into the water. The wee fish scatter.
McHenry has spent more than three
decades as a biologist and habitat manager
with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Their
ancestral land has been radically reshaped
since the removal of two hydroelectric dams
allowed the river to run unfettered for the
first time in more than a century.
The waterway begins in a snowfield high
in the Olympic Mountains and flows 45 miles
north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For mil-
lennia, the river ran thick with salmon and
trout. As many as 400,000 adult chinook,
coho, and other species returned annually
to spawn, making it one of the richest
anadromous fish habitats in the nation.
That changed in 1910, when the Olympic
Power Company erected the Elwha Dam
to power timber and pulp mills in nearby
Port Angeles. In 1927, it built another, called
Glines Canyon, 8 miles upstream of the first.
Beyond flooding Klallam religious sites and
a verdant floodplain, the structures, which
lacked fish passages, reduced spawning
grounds to the river’s first 5 miles. Salmon
populations plummeted in response. During
the 20th century’s waning years, the system
produced a negligible amount of electricity—
about half the energy requirements of a
single local mill—and its owners had decided
that making it more fish-friendly was too ex-
pensive. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush
signed a bill authorizing the Interior Depart-
ment to buy the dams for $29.5 million, tear
them down, and restore the habitat.
The National Park Service spent almost
two decades planning the $350 million proj-
ect. The biggest challenge was managing
the immense amount of sediment: Some
33 million tons of silt, gravel, and rock
littered the two reservoirs. A free- flowing
river moves a lot of earth; letting it all go
at once would wreak havoc downstream.
Work started in 2008 with construction of
a treatment plant to filter the Port Angeles
water supply. Beginning in 2011, crews par-
tially drained the lakes and slowly emptied
them by dismantling the barriers in 10- to
20-foot sections using a crane and a barge-
mounted excavator. The final chunks of
concrete and steel fell in 2014.
That done, the Park Service worked with
the tribe on the agency’s second- largestGinger, stands at the edge of the Elwha
River in western Washington, whining
softly. He holds her back from a pool where
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny
salmon fry shimmer in the sunlight. They