The Daily Bucket is a place where we post and exchange our observations about what is happening in the natural world in our neighborhood. Each note about the bugs, buds, and birds around us is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns of nature that are quietly unwinding around us. |
This story is not about anything in
my backyard. I think it is pretty close to that of bwren, and some others who come here. It is the story of the removal of two dams along the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula. Here is a map. The river comes out just west of Port Angeles. Each dam created a lake when they were built in 1913 and 1927. The first was the Elwha Dam. The second the Glines Canyon Dam. Many more
details can be found here.
Removal of these dams will restore the ability of salmon to navigate up river to spawn for the first time in 100 years. The first to be finished was Elwha. There is a
webcam site here that has kept track with several pictures each day since the removal project started in 2011. I usually click on the
html5 link to view them. In the upper left is a tool for selecting a date and time for any images. I went to August 24, 2011 to see what the dam complex looked like before the start.
It was completed two months ago. Here is the site October 16, 2012. Nice improvement.
Come below for more about the removal of the Glines Canyon Dam.
I used the html5 link to view Glines Canyon on September 4, 2011. It was a much taller and vertical structure with a greater challenge to removal. There was less room to move heavy equipment.
They used a barge floating in the lake to jack-hammer away at the structure. Here is a view of the equipment on March 19, 2012. They had to do some removel and then wait for the water level to go down. Then, do more removal and wait.
An image from September 12, 2012 shows the barge gone and a backhoe and lift bucket to clean up some more debris. It gets more challenging the farther down they go.
As of December 5, 2012, they are very close to reaching the level of the river below the dam. The removal is to be finished in the summer of 2013.
If you want to see a video of the dam removal process, this one from the National Park Service is quite good. It is called Stepping Down the Dams. It also discusses some of the challenges of the deep sediment removal process. Very interesting. Click this image to view it. It lasts about 6 minutes.
What is happening in your backyard? We would like to hear from you. Add your comments and observations to the bucket and give it a good healthy stir. Have a nice day.