Tons and tons of sediment, built up behind Elwha and Glines Canyon dams over a century, have been sluiced away by the Elwha River so far, forming a widening sand spit at the river’s mouth, where it meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca. What the river is carrying away — mud, sand, gravel, cobbles, trees, tree stumps and branches — is staggering in its scope.
At one point, the build-up behind the dams was estimated at 18 million cubic yards, but scientists now say it’s more like 34 million: “enough to cover a football field with a 5.5 -mile-deep layer of silt, sand, gravel and cobbles.” The water today is just as gray and murky as it was almost a year ago (“Elwha River Gone Wild“), but gulls are now happily colonizing an extension of the peninsula that’s about one-third of a mile long.
You can learn more about the Elwha River Restoration project online, or by visiting the Klondike Gold Rush Museum (before the end of April, when the temporary exhibit closes). Follow along at home on webcam.
The Glines Canyon Dam’s removal has been delayed, thanks to the choking silt set free. As the Seattle Times reported:
Dam removal was put on hold last October until contractors make more than $1.4 million in emergency retrofits to the new $71.5 million Elwha Water Facilities plant. It was built as part of the dam-removal project, to clean sediment from the water supply to an industrial pulp and paper plant, a fish-rearing channel and a hatchery. But the plant failed during the first fall rains last October, when fish screens and pumps became clogged with leaves, twigs, branches and sediment.
The silt-charged water has been bad news for light-seeking kelp, but researchers think that the silt-and-sand mix will bring a crop of sea grass, which salmon like, and provide a spawning ground for other fish.
Upriver, in the areas behind the reservoirs, the Elwha revegetation crew in March sowed 1,400 pounds of native plant seeds (eight different native plants) in the sediment left behind. Downriver, the Elwha’s mouth — already a minor tourist attraction for birders and whale-watchers — is a vantage point for fans of newborn sand spits as well.
