Ringing in New Life for Rivers

by Amy Kober

As I turned on to the gravel access road leading down to the Sandy River, I was greeted by a big orange sign that read "Blasting Zone Ahead." It was the morning of July 24 and I was there to witness the demolition of 94-year old Marmot Dam.

The weather that day on the Sandy was sunny and the sky was a perfect Northwest summer blue. A large crowd of local citizens, officials, reporters and camera crews waited in anticipation. A helicopter hovered overhead.

It reminded me of another July morning eight years ago, when I stood on the bank of another river, the Kennebec, in Augusta, Maine, to watch the removal of the 160-year old Edwards Dam. The removal of Edwards Dam was a turning point for river restoration in our country. It was the first time that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had ordered removal of an operating hydropower project in favor of fisheries restoration.

There on the Kennebec, the dignitaries rang a ceremonial bell, which triggered the bells at a local church to start tolling. Those bells were the signal for the backhoe to dig out the dirt coffer dam that was holding back the river. The bells also had a symbolic purpose – they memorialized the end of the dam and the rebirth of the river. They pealed the beginning of a new era for the river and the community.

Here on the Sandy, Peggy Fowler, the CEO of Portland General Electric (PGE) captured similar sentiments about past and future in her remarks. “In one sense, it's very sad to see this go,” she said. “But the time has come to say goodbye…the bottom line is, it's good for the fish and it saves our customers money.”

She led the crowd in a countdown. When she pushed the plunger triggering the detonation, 650 pounds of explosives went off with a loud boom and plumes of dust rose into the blue sky.

Cameras flashed. Champagne corks popped. The crowd whooped and cheered. Once the dust cleared, people hurried forward to grab little chunks of the dam's concrete for mementos. Several excavators and dump trucks immediately began digging away at the now-weakened dam and hauling away the rubble of concrete chunks and tangled re-bar.

There are more than 75,000 dams in our country. More than 600, mostly small-to medium-sized dams have been torn down for public safety, economic or environmental reasons. Most of these dam removals have been in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions.

Now, however, we're starting to see some big dams coming down – and all of them are in the Pacific Northwest.

The 47-feet tall Marmot Dam was part of PGE's Bull Run Hydroelectric Project. The company decided to decommission the project when it became clear that bringing it up to modern environmental standards wouldn't be cost-effective. PGE is replacing the power from the dams--an annual average of about 13 megawatts (13aMw)--with wind power from the Klondike II and Biglow Canyon wind farms in Sherman County.

"PGE, like most of its customers, believes that we should grow a sustainable power supply while reducing environmental impact. But our customers also want their power delivered at a fair price," says John Esler, Acting Director, Hydro Licensing Dept., PGE. "In this case the best thing for the river environment and the endangered salmon that use this habitat, as well as for our customers' pocketbooks, was to decommission the entire project. We are keeping our other hydro plants because we can upgrade them for fish protection and increase their efficiency."

More than twenty conservation groups, recreation organizations and government agencies worked with PGE to craft the far-reaching agreement. When the Sandy River is free-flowing, salmon and steelhead will have unimpeded access to 100 miles of upstream habitat, and free passage all the way from the Pacific to Mount Hood. Next summer PGE will dismantle a dam on the Little Sandy River, opening up eight more miles of habitat. To top it off, PGE is donating 1,500 acres of land in the Sandy Basin, which will form the foundation of a 9,000-acre conservation and recreation area, to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Sandy River is a sandy river, and large amounts of sediment accumulated behind the dam. When this sediment is released, scientists and engineers expect it to mimic the natural releases that regularly flow off of Mount Hood. The biologists who helped craft the dam removal plan acknowledge there will be some short-term impacts, but say any harm the sediment release causes to fish will be overshadowed by the long-term improvements to habitat.

The dams on the Sandy are the first in a series of major blockages that will be removed from Northwest rivers, like Washington's Elwha and White Salmon, over the next five years. Most of these dam removals are the result of the licensing requirement that applies to non-federal hydroelectric dams. Federal law dictates that hydropower dams must renew their operating licenses every 30 to 50 years. The process forces an examination of how a dam's benefits stack up against its environmental, economic and social costs, and it gives the public a chance to re-evaluate the appropriate use of the river.

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Not long after the dams in the Sandy Basin are torn down, another dam on a Columbia River tributary will be removed. For almost 100 years, the White Salmon River's 125-feet tall Condit Dam – which has no fish passage – has prevented salmon and steelhead from reaching most of their spawning habitat. The dam also disrupts natural river flows, as well as the movement of spawning gravel and up-rooted trees, which are important habitat building-blocks.

Condit Dam, White Salmon River

Condit Dam produces little electricity (an average of 10 megawatts, which is 0.1 percent of the dam owner PacifiCorp's total power production). Analysis by PacifiCorp found that operating the dam under modern requirements – including basic protections under the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act – isn't cost-effective. The company signed an agreement in 1999 with the Yakama Indian Nation, conservation groups, and government agencies to remove the dam.

Steelhead are expected to spawn the season following dam removal; salmon might take several years to become fully established. Paddlers are looking forward to exploring a free-flowing White Salmon, the upper reach of which is already a nationally-recognized whitewater boating destination.

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The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, whose reservation is at the mouth of the Elwha River on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, has been working for river and salmon restoration since Elwha Dam was completed in 1913.

Elwha Dam and the upriver Glines Canyon Dam inundated the tribe's creation site and other spiritually important places along the river. The dams, built without fish passage, decimated the river's salmon runs. Elwha Dam, which blew out once during its construction because its foundation was not secured to bedrock, poses a safety risk to the tribe's reservation downstream.

In 1992, recognizing that the dams' costs far outweighed their benefits, Congress authorized removal of the two dams. Since then, dam removal has been delayed over the years because of funding issues and the need to complete mitigation measures, like a new water treatment plant for the city of Port Angeles.

Elwha Dam, Elwha River

When the time comes, Glines Canyon Dam, at 210 feet, will be the tallest dam ever removed in our country. But more significant than the size of the dam is the scope of the restoration potential. Eighty-three percent of the Elwha River's watershed is already protected within Olympic National Park. In most other cases around the country where dams have been removed, the rivers continue to be hampered by additional dams, logging, pollution or development. But on the Elwha, once the dams are gone, the river will be wild again. The watershed will be a one-of-a-kind natural laboratory to study how a river restores itself.

Today, the roughly 4,000 salmon that return to the Elwha are a tiny fraction of the river's historic runs. Fish biologist Michael McHenry says he expects salmon and steelhead to thrive once they can access the high-quality habitat within the park. It should take about 20 years following dam removal before 400,000 salmon are returning annually.

While the removal of dams on the Sandy, White Salmon and Elwha rivers is significant, they may one day be overshadowed by even bigger projects. Should dams be torn down on the Klamath River, in California and Oregon, or the lower Snake River in eastern Washington, these would be the world's largest river and salmon restoration projects.

The Klamath once supported the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast, and the Snake contributed half of the Columbia River's legendary salmon runs. On both rivers–in large part because of the dams--the wild salmon runs have crashed.

The Klamath Basin has been in crisis for decades, suffering from heated disputes over water management. Now, spurred by the need to renew the licenses for the four PacifiCorp-owned hydropower dams on the Klamath, irrigators, farmers, tribes, fishermen, conservation groups and government agencies are in negotiations, trying to hammer out a long-term river management solution. Removing the dams – which would open up over 300 miles of salmon habitat – is receiving serious consideration.

Author and Oregon native David James Duncan, an advocate for restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River, calls the lower Snake “the gateway, not the palace.” Removing the four federal dams on the lower Snake would give salmon better access to some of the best remaining habitat in the lower 48 – 5,500 miles of rivers in the Snake basin including the Imnaha, Grande Ronde, Wenaha, Lostine, Minam, Wallowa, South and Main Clearwater; North, South, East, Middle, Yankee, and Little forks of the Salmon; Lemhi, Pahsimeroi, Selway, Rapid, Lochsa and Tucannon.

Salmon runs were relatively strong in the Snake basin until the 1960s. That is when the Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the four lower Snake dams. Looking at a graph of salmon returns, the line plummets following the completion of Lower Granite, the final dam on the lower Snake. So far, none of the federal government's salmon recovery plans on the Snake have worked. Salmon returns continue on a downward trajectory. This year, only four sockeye returned to Idaho's Redfish Lake – named for the fish that once returned in the thousands.

Lower Granite Dam is posing problems not only for the salmon, but also for the city of Lewiston, Idaho. As the Snake River hits the slackwater behind the dam, it slows and drops sediment. The sediment is collecting on the river bottom, causing the water level to rise, along with questions about flood risk.

The Army Corps is looking at several options for addressing the rising river level. The option of raising the level of levees, roads and bridges has received criticism because of the huge expense. Also, some community advocates oppose the idea of higher levees, since it would further cut off the city from the river. Many believe that a second option, dredging the massive amount of sediment out of the river, is logistically and economically unfeasible. Advocates of a free-flowing lower Snake River believe the situation in Lewiston is bolstering their case for dam removal.

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The four lower Snake dams have a combined average yearly output of about 1,075 MW. These are “run of river” dams with no water storage capacity, and they produce most of their power during spring snowmelt. During the seasons when the region's power needs increase, in winter and in late summer, the lower Snake dams contribute around 425 to 525 MW.

The Northwest Energy Coalition found that replacing the dams' electricity with a mix of energy efficiency measures and renewables would cost between $86 million and $179 million per year for 20 years. The coalition's math shows that if ratepayers were to bear the costs, residential power bills could rise 65 cents to $2.00 per month.

Because hydropower can be quickly ramped up and down it can be used to integrate intermittent energy sources, like wind, into the grid. Would removing the lower Snake dams make it harder or more expensive to integrate wind power? “These four dams are hardly the only or the biggest dams in the region,” says Steven Weiss, a senior policy associate with the Energy Coalition. He says using efficiency measures to replace the generation load from the lower Snake dams would actually help wind integration because it would free up over 1000 megawatts of valuable transmission space on the grid.

Global warming is giving the Snake River dams debate new urgency. Don Chapman had a 50-year-long career as a respected scientist and consultant to power interests including public utility districts and the Bonneville Power Administration. He opposed removing dams on the lower Snake. That is, until he confronted the evidence of global warming. Rising water temperatures and lower flows will put even more stress on already-imperiled salmon and steelhead. Chapman now believes that if we are to save the fish, we need to remove the four dams, which will restore habitat and help cool the river.

"If we want to save wild fish, we need habitat protection that includes breaching [the dams]," Chapman told the Pacific Northwest Inlander newspaper.

"The mainstem Columbia dams — John Day, McNary — they produce a hell of a lot of power. The lower Snake dams don't produce much. They don't store water," he said. "It's not politically expedient or wise to say too much when you work for an agency like Bonneville. But if you got enough beer, you'd get guys who work in public utilities say the Snake dams are not necessary."

With a warmer climate, hydropower in the Northwest could become less reliable as hotter temperatures shrink mountain snowpack and reduce river flows. So, diversifying our energy sources makes sense, says Rob Masonis, senior director of the Northwest office of American Rivers. “Instead of clinging to old and costly dams, we should invest in energy conservation, and renewables like wind and solar.”

He says hydropower will continue to be part of the region's energy portfolio, and not all dams, or even most dams, should be removed. “Many dams can be re-operated to sufficiently minimize their impacts, as we've seen on rivers like the Skagit and the Deschutes,” he says. Masonis believes those who use global warming as a reason to keep the Klamath and lower Snake dams in place are presenting a false choice.

“We must reject the argument that we need to choose between clean air and clean water, between a cooler climate and healthy wild salmon runs. Don't our communities and future generations deserve all of these things when we have the means to provide them?” he says.

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One of the wonderful things about rivers is their resilience, their capacity for rejuvenation. Perhaps that is why the story of dam removal is so compelling. It is a story of hope and healing.

“The Northwest was built by rivers, and dams are only part of that story,” says Masonis. By advocating for and celebrating the removal of a dam, we do not discount the people who built it, or the benefits it provided. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who championed the removal of Edwards Dam in Maine and many others around the country, said, “ Let us remember that dams are not monuments, they are tools -- instruments that serve the needs of the people who oversee them. Those needs can change.”

The dismantling of an obsolete dam can be both a time for reflection, and a time for celebration. That is why the bells tolling during the Edwards Dam removal were so appropriate. The dismantling of Edwards Dam was like a wake, a wedding and a birth – all at once. Bells solemnly marked the closing of one chapter and they sang of new beginnings. The bells broke the slackwater silence and the river found its voice again.

On the Bank of the Sandy River

On the morning of July 24, the day of the Marmot Dam removal, I stood on the footbridge at the dam and looked down at the Sandy River. There were five salmon, holding in the current below the dam. Waiting, it seemed. I thought back to Edwards Dam in Maine. I thought about the wild Atlantic salmon that are now swimming up the Kennebec to spawn. I thought about rivers and communities made whole again.

Standing there on the bridge over the Sandy River, I thought of the future – and I heard bells.