Elwah River Campaign

The Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula has been the focus of intensive efforts to restore the river by removing two environmentally destructive dams. This February after years of delays FoE's campaign to restore the Elwha celebrated a major victory when the Interior Department officially acquired the two dams that have blocked the river for nearly 90 years. This is the vital first step in the process of the federal government fulfilling its commitment to remove these dams and restore the historic salmon runs of the Elwha.

While salmon and trout populations are endangered on numerous streams and rivers, several scientific studies have concluded that removal of the two Elwha River dams offers the single best opportunity to restore salmon anywhere on the West Coast. Removing the Elwha dams will rebuild endangered chinook and other salmon runs in the river from their current level of less than 3,000 fish to historic levels of almost 400,000 adult fish in the river each year.

Despite the opposition of Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), who sought to block project funding and attach restrictions on dam removal through appropriations "riders," advocates for restoring the Elwha have recently succeeded in defeating efforts to derail this valuable restoration project. With strong assistance from Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA) and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, we also secured $22 million in the current fiscal year (FY2000) budget to fund the final project's engineering and design work as well as the first phase of deconstruction activity.

While we celebrate our success with the Elwha, there is still more important work to be accomplished. Before the Elwha salmon can return to their historic spawning grounds, we must overcome two significant challenges:

The funding for dam removal, river restoration and water quality protection measures (approximately $70 million total) needs to be appropriated by Congress, and

Continuing efforts by Senator Gorton to delay removal of one of the Elwha dams for as long as 12 years must be defeated.

Bureaucratic inertia and a lack of urgency within government agencies threaten to postpone dam removal. Local, state and federal officials need to quickly finalize the specific details of the removal plan in order to avoid having deconstruction work postponed a year or more. Time is running out for the fish runs in the Elwha; many are dangerously close to extinction and can't afford to wait any longer.