Plans to remove the two dams on the Elwha River and eventually restore salmon runs to historic levels are continuing as planned, with dam removal slated to begin in 2007.
Partners in the project, including the National Park Service and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, are making preparations to secure against downriver flooding, restore the river’s natural habitat and construct a water-treatment facility.
“We’re just plugging away,” Brian Winter, Elwha project manager with the National Park Service, said Thursday.
Draining of the reservoirs at the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams will begin in 2007, a start date that has been pushed back a few years from previous estimates due to delays in the project.
The dismantling of the dams is expected to take two to three years, and the river returning to its natural state 30 years later.
The 105-foot Elwha Dam was erected in 1911, and the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam upriver was constructed in 1926
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The rest of the story appears in the Friday/Saturday Peninsula Daily News.