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CA.Timothy
climber
California
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Oct 17, 2014 - 01:09pm PT
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on one pic posted above, you note that some re-veg cuttings are not doing so well. Can you describe what other rehab projects are going on? Thanks for the pics
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 17, 2014 - 01:22pm PT
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Ca Timothy,
Aside from some reveg and planting some salmon smolts upstream I do not know of anything else going on . The river is doing a fine job of redistributing the sediments no need to interfere.
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Oct 17, 2014 - 01:35pm PT
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HV... thanks for posting.
Looks like the river will be just fine now. The water looks very clear, I figured the water would be all silted up. I wonder what will happen when we get some winter storms and some big rains.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Oregon
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Oct 17, 2014 - 02:09pm PT
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The power companies and fisheries people learned on the Columbia River tributary dam removals was that the rivers dealt with the sediments much more quickly that they anticipated.
The 2007 Marmot dam on the Sandy was projected to take months or years to recover, and most of the sediment was redistributed in one day. spawning beds below the dam were even improved.
Fish were swimming past the dam site within a week.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
The Condit Dam removal on the White Salmon River was done a little differently. The dam bottom was breached and then the dam was removed. Full removal took a year, but salmon were swimming upstream within days of the breach.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Both rivers now sustain very good salmon spawning.
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Darwin
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2014 - 02:19pm PT
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I care about the salmon and vegetation and all, but does anyone know if the surfing break at the Mouth of the Elwah has changed?
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Oct 17, 2014 - 02:43pm PT
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great thread having now visited the area. The sediment and topography make sense to me.
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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Oct 18, 2014 - 07:22pm PT
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Hardly, thanks for posting these pics over the course of this project, hard to find perspectives of an amazing project here in Washington. The breaching of the dikes and the restoration of the Nisqually delta is another great habitat project in our state.
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 27, 2015 - 03:59pm PT
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Have not updated this thread in a while, but since the last update the Elwha has literally been on a rampage. Now that the river has the entire watershed to collect logs from the number of logjams have increased one hundred fold and coupled with the excess of sand and gravel being worked out of the former Lake Mills raising the stream bed in areas where no deposition has been occurring for the last 80 years the Elwha refuses to stay where it has historically been since it was dammed in the late 1920’s.
Last year during a big warm gulley washer of a storm the river took out a chunk of land and was threatening to take out the Olympic hot springs road at the park boundary necessitating a month long bank reinforcement project last summer during low water. During that same storm the river widened and deepened the stream channel at the highway 101 bridge crossing. This bridge built in 1927 was at the head of Lake Aldwell the reservoir of the lower Elwha dam built 13 years prior to that, so it has never had a free flowing Elwha going under it, something for which I am sure it was not designed for. Despite assurances from county officials and state D.O.T folks that it is ok the longevity of this bridge concerns me since I live on the opposite side of it from town and if it were all of a sudden not be there getting to Port Angeles from my place would not be easy.
This year as a result of our last flood episode a few weeks ago the Olympic hot springs road is once again closed at the park boundary for an indefinite period. This time an old side channel that flowed behind the Elwha campground was reactivated filling the campground with sand and driftwood and taking the road out completely where the side channel crosses the road at the lower end of the campground.
Further upstream at Altaire campground which used to have about 30 campsites there is at the most 4 of them left and by all appearances I’d say they are not long for this world.
It is fascinating to watch the changes but at the same time disheartening for me that the road into the park is threatened to such a degree, with me being less ambulatory than I once was and the Olympic National Park’s history of taking forever to fix things or not fixing them at all. In the meantime it makes for a nice place to go for a bicycle ride with zero auto traffic and scarcely anyone up there at all.
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c wilmot
climber
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Dec 27, 2015 - 06:18pm PT
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No dam = uncontrollable water...
The people who wanted better fishing forgot that dams did more than generate power and conserve water....
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Dec 27, 2015 - 06:48pm PT
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112 still open?
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Dec 27, 2015 - 07:04pm PT
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Were the losses due to the impacts to the roads, campgrounds and other recreational park facilities mitigated (committed to) in the NPS NEPA document? If so, great. If not, they better get ready to do so now.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Dec 27, 2015 - 07:42pm PT
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^^^
NEPA doc was likely produced via the Corps Sec10/404 permit, by the ACOE, rather than an NPS produced one. At least if NPS was smart that's how they would have done it. Mitigating for unforseen consquences of dynamic natural river systems...unlikely, IMO.
I say that as someone who wrote those ACOE NEPA docs and issued permits under Sec10 of RHA/Sec 404 of CWA for several years in a part of the country with river systems that makes lower 48 look like static trickles.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 30, 2015 - 12:05pm PT
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No dam = uncontrollable water...
That is the whole point - let the river be a river and let water do what water does.
There's a stunning quantity of silt building up where Elwah enters Juan de Fuca.
To be expected when you dump it all at once.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Dec 30, 2015 - 01:07pm PT
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The people who wanted better fishing forgot that dams did more than generate power and conserve water....
Among those other things was stopping salmon migration. That's kinda important if you want fish.
Actually, the river mouth is being restored to it's old size. When the silt stopped with dam construction, it eroded away.
The silt is now arriving at the sediment starved Elwah feeder bluffs, which feed Ediz hook by Port Angeles.
http://www.coastalwatershedinstitute.org/blog/?m=201410
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Dec 30, 2015 - 01:12pm PT
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