EDITOR’S NOTE: As work to remove the two Elwha River dams begins this week — with special events to commemorate the beginning of the river restoration project (see story on home page) — Port Angeles writer/historian John Kendall continues his look-back at the dams, their role in North Olympic Peninsula development and their legacy as they come down.
Part 1 appeared in Sunday’s editions and at http://tinyurl.com/pdnretro1.
By John Kendall
For Peninsula Daily News
For 111 years with the Elwha River, it’s always been about power.
Tom Aldwell’s dam harnessed the river’s power to generate electricity.
The resulting dam meant that fish born upriver couldn’t spawn and die there.
The Native Americans who lived along the river and had lived off the river’s bounty could only watch the dead fish, now on the wrong side of the dam.
Mill owners operated the dams to ensure power to the mill at the base of Ediz Hook in Port Angeles.
Over the years, the federal government took a larger role in monitoring the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams — first for their safety and finally their reason for being.
Beginning in the 1960s, attitudes had shifted regarding the environment, hydroelectricity, tribal and fishing rights.
Those groups amassed enough power so the government eventually agreed to dismantle the dams.
Orville Campbell, 86, has been involved with what he called “the project” — both dams — from 1973 to 1988 when he was resident engineer for Crown Zellerbach Corp. in Port Angeles.
During the 1990s, he was involved in the federal legislation that would ultimately remove them.
In the 1920s, the need for hydroelectric dams, like the ones on the Elwha, was growing. The Federal Water Power Act was passed in 1920, establishing the Federal Power Commission.
“The purpose of the act was to encourage investment in power facilities on the rivers of the United States,” Campbell said.
The act required future builders of hydroelectric dams to file an application and get a license.
In 1921, Congress amended the act to remove national parks from the commission’s jurisdiction and let Congress have that power.
In 1935, the act was changed so the commission could not issue a license for any dam in a national park. The statute did not address whether the commission could relicense existing dams in national parks.
These issues would resurface during the 1980s as foes of the Glines Canyon Dam argued that the commission’s successor did not have the power to relicense it.
In 1926, before creation of Olympic National Park, the Zellerbachs and other investors formed the Northwestern Power Co. and received a license to build Glines Canyon Dam.
“They also acquired another site farther upstream and had plans for building a dam on that site in the future, which never came to fruition,” Campbell said.
The Glines dam was licensed for 50 years. The commission now inspected both dams annually.
“They were not in-depth inspections — a walk through,” Campbell recalled of the early inspections.
When Olympic National Park was created in 1938, Glines Canyon Dam was outside the park and a part of the complete project was on national forest land.
In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt added those national forest lands to the park.
The principal facilities and the lower part of Lake Mills were on land owned by Crown Zellerbach, while the rest of the lake and part of the transmission line were in the park — and another part of the transmission line were in the national forest.
The Elwha Dam is outside the national park and forest.
In late 1940s, the Bonneville Power Administration extended transmission lines and was able to sell its power from Eastern Washington to Port Angeles mills at cheaper rates than the cost of Elwha power.
“The value of power from the projects was not as critical as it was before,” said Campbell.
“The mills now had a lot of low-cost energy available to them. It continued to run the projects and utilize the energy from them, and they ran until the 1960s with little concern on anybody’s part.
“This illustrates the events that occurred after 1960. New forces were at work that changed the dynamics of hydropower, not just on the Elwha but everywhere in the United States.
“The dams operated from the 1920s through the 1950s with no controversy at all,” Campbell added.
“You have to ask yourself: What changed all this?
“In my opinion, the hydropower industry was not behaving in a way that met the requirements and wishes of the general population, Pollution became unbearable in many areas of the United States and the arrogant hydropower industry believed it did not have to behave in a way that would please recreationalists, fishermen and the rest of the population.
“The environmental movement started, in my opinion, because of this condition that developed over time.”
The lower dam was never licensed, Campbell said.
“But in 1968, the Federal Power Commission requested that Crown Z apply for a license,” he said. “The commission never did anything with it until the 1980s.”
On Nov. 20, 1970, the commission ruled that the license had expired for Glines Canyon Dam, six years early. Thus began a gradual shift in the licensing process:
More government agencies and special interest groups would try to gain power over the process, while new laws and public opinion shifts resulted in new criteria added to the process.
In November 1977, a dam in Georgia failed, killing 39 people. President Jimmy Carter ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to inspect dams nationwide.
“This was the beginning of a huge dam safety program,” Campbell recalled. “One of the things that was required at every dam in the United States was that dams be able to safely pass a ‘probable maximum flood’ — an extreme figure, about 150 times more than average flow on the Elwha.
“So that’s what Crown Z spent 12 years doing — anchoring those dams. We spent in excess of $10 million.”
By the early 1980s, both dams passed that test.
So besides competing with Bonneville Power Administration, Crown Zellerbach was spending millions on the dams.
Why didn’t the company sell or abandon them?
“Owning a hydro project is like having a tiger by the tail — you don’t dare let go,” Campbell responded. “You cannot get out from under the responsibility.
“You might be able to sell them, but you wouldn’t get much for them. The company never entertained selling the projects.”
Although owners of the Port Angeles paper mill — Crown Zellerbach, James River, Daishowa America — changed over those years, “it was in the purchase and sale agreement that because of the uncertainty of transferring a license during relicensing process, the companies decided that James River would continue to own the project and continue to pursue the relicensing,” Campbell said.
During the early 1980s, the federal commission proposed linking the licenses of both dams, while the owner of the dams wanted to keep the licenses separate.
“The company’s thinking was that if we could separate the two projects and make them individual projects,” Campbell said, “then perhaps we might be able to license the upper one easier than the lower one.”
After a quasi-judicial hearing, the commission ruled that the two projects would become one.
In 1986, a new federal law amended the Federal Power Act of 1920.
A new agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, would give equal consideration to the environment, recreation, fish and wildlife — not just hydropower — when dealing with dam licenses.
To Campbell, relicensing the Elwha dams “was extraordinarily difficult and expensive.” “Inspections increased in scope and intensity,” he said. “We cooperated fully and there was very little FERC could complain about.
“FERC started demanding information — every conceivable thing you could imagine. And hearings were being held and people were bringing up problems and reasons why the projects should be removed, rather than relicensed.
“The 1986 law created an extraordinarily complex and expensive process for meeting the required standards for relicensing.”
Tuesday: Federal fisheries officials and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe begin linking fisheries issues to relicensing of the Elwha River dams.
