Research Opportunity for Undergrad and Post-Bac Students
Attached is a poster advertising a Research Apprenticeship course at the Friday Harbor Laboratories that would be of interest to students concerned with restoration projects and their impact on sediment in the marine environment. The apprenticeship allows students to evaluate potential impacts of the Elwha River dam removals focusing on the fate of sediment when it reaches the nearshore, and how seabed habitats will be impacted. Please contact us if you have any questions (ogston@ocean.washington.edu; nittroue@ocean.washington.edu).
Andrea Ogston
Chuck Nittrouer
$100,000 grant to help Peninsula children learn about watershed, science
By Paige Dickerson, Peninsula Daily News, 11-16-09
PORT ANGELES -- The Arthur D. Feiro Marine Life Center and the Olympic Park Institute have received $100,000 for educational programs that they operate as partners. The money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Bay Watershed Education Training Program -- also known as B-WET -- was awarded to the organizations' North Olympic Watershed Science program for fourth- through eighth-graders in Sequim, Port Angeles and Crescent school districts, said Deborah Moriarty, spokeswoman for the marine life center... Olympic Park Institute staff members also will take every eighth-grader to the Elwha River to look at water quality and sediment distribution, Sanford said. "We want them to look at this prior to the dam removal," he said. "We are giving them all the tools they need to be quality scientists." Ultimately, 1,700 students will go through a program, he said.
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20091116/NEWS/311169991
U.S. Razing Dams to Restore Waterways
msnbc.com, 11-15-09
Video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/33951154#33951154
Ceremony dedicates greenhouse complex to be used for Elwha River restoration
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News, 10-23-2009
CARLSBORG -- The crowd had much to celebrate: nature's healing powers, a big, warm house, one man whose touch was magic. The dedication Thursday morning of Olympic National Park's new 2,100-square-foot greenhouse at Robin Hill County Park was a festive event, with a sprinkling of tears. The greenhouse, together with a nearby cabin for park staff and volunteers, comprises the Matt Albright Native Plant Center. Its completion signifies a step closer to restoration of the Elwha River to its torrential, salmon-rich glory. Albright was a man who grew plants in a less-than-optimal facility at the park's headquarters near Port Angeles. For 19 years he nurtured young trees, ferns and other foliage, so that degraded areas of Olympic National Park could be brought back to health. Albright took part in the plans for the massive Elwha River restoration, a $308 million project that will include removal of the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams beginning in 2011. He envisioned a new greenhouse where he and his team of volunteers would grow the plants to rejuvenate some 700 acres surrounding the river...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20091023/news/310239985
‘It’s going to be just like Tse-whit-zen’
By Richard Walker, Today Correspondent, Indian Country Today, 10-14-2009
PORT ANGELES, Wash. – When the dams come down on the Elwha River in 2012, the lake waters will recede, revealing the origins of the Klallam people.
For the first time in almost a century, they will see the rock formations resembling two coiled baskets, where the Creator bathed and blessed the ancestors.
They will see the upper river where salmon returned to continue the cycle of life, their spawned-out carcasses feeding wildlife and their decomposing remains feeding giant cedars and other plant life.
They will see the meadows where the great-grandparents of today’s Klallam hunted, gathered plants for basket making and for medicines, and went on vision quests.
It was along this river that Hunter John lived to the age of 130, his longevity bolstered by a diet of deer, elk, and king salmon rich in Omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D. Hunter John was a boy when Capt. George Vancouver and the Royal Navy entered Klallam’s territorial waters April 29, 1792. Hunter John died in 1912, the year the Elwha Dam was built.
Klallam educator Jamie Valadez looks forward to ceremonies returning to the creation site.
“It’s going to be just like Tse-whit-zen,” she said, referring to the shoreline village site uncovered during excavation for a since-abandoned state highway project. “That river is sacred. It’s where we were created.”
The dam removal is significant on several levels. First is the reconnection of the Klallam people to land that has been inundated for 100 years. Second, the dam removal will restore habitat for endangered salmon and threatened steelhead populations...
Read the full story at http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/63860642.html
Red ink still flowing at Clallam courthouse; employee furloughs possible
By Rob Ollikainen, Peninsula Daily News, 10-8-2009
...On a brighter note, Jones predicted that Clallam County will emerge from the economic recession faster than the rest of the nation.
He said the Elwha River dam removal project should begin to create jobs and bolster commerce on the North Olympic Peninsula in late 2010.
"The expectation is that by the second half of the year, and certainly by the fourth quarter of the year, we expect that [revenue] to start getting better," Jones said.
"The primary driver in Clallam County is going to be the ramping up of the dam removals on the Elwha River."
The National Park Service plans to bring down the 108-foot Elwha Dam and the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam, which were built without fish ladders, beginning in 2011.
"They're going to hire local people," Jones said. "They're going to be buying materials and equipment, and we'll get some sales tax revenue out of that.
"We'll have people going to work. They'll buy clothes at Swains, food in our grocery stores and eat in our restaurants.
"All of that is just going to magnify as the dam removal projects ramp up, get going and continue for the next two or three years."...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20091008/news/310089992
Data buoys in Strait to provide real-time marine data
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 10-5-2009
A Navy-funded pilot project being tested in the North Olympic Peninsula's backyard is intended to improve both national security and environmental research.
The "floating area network," developed by the Port Townsend-based company Intellicheck Mobilisa, is designed to use buoys to keep an eye on ports and shipping lanes while at the same time collecting real-time data on environmental conditions in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound.
The buoys are made to help national security by being able to carry sensors that can detect radiation from dirty bombs on passing ships and infrared cameras that can be controlled remotely to catch people illegally entering U.S. waters, said Intellicheck Mobilisa project manager Jim Rabb.
They are also designed, with help from the University of Washington's applied physics lab, to be outfitted with sensors that transmit data on the levels of dissolved oxygen, salinity, algae, among other environmental indicators to university researchers and possibly by the end of the year, even local marine life centers.
After two years of research and development and $10 million in federal dollars, five buoys with only the environmental sensors have been deployed.
They are near Marrowstone Island and Fort Worden State Park, near Edmonds, in the north Hood Canal, and most recently, one was set up Sept. 4 north of Sequim Bay.
The environmental data collected by these buoys can be found in real-time on the Web site, http://buoy.icmobil.com/, which was developed by Intellicheck Mobilisa...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20091005/news/310059997
Water flow from dams to increase in Elwha River
Peninsula Daily News, 10-4-2009
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- Additional water is being released from the dams on the Elwha River to augment a low stream flow and protect Chinook salmon redds, or egg nests, below the lower dam.
The river's average flow for early October is approximately 648 cubic feet per second; even with the current augmented flows, the river is flowing at 353 cubic feet per second, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Both the Glines Canyon Dam -- which forms Lake Mills 13 miles from the river's mouth at the Strait of Juan de Fuca -- and the Elwha Dam -- which creates Lake Aldwell eight miles from the river's mouth -- are managed to attempt to maintain the river's natural flow by measuring the amount of water entering the reservoirs and then releasing the same amount, Barb Maynes, Olympic National Park spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement.
This year's dry weather and very low river flows have generated concern for spawning salmon and the need for an increased water release, she said.
"It's a very dry year," Maynes said. "We had that little pulse of rain here, but it's just been a very dry year."
The increased flows will continue until the reservoir has dropped up to 18 feet, or until a substantial amount of rain falls, whichever happens first...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20091004/news/310049981
Elwha River gets an early boost from tribe
By Mark Yuasa, Seattle Times, 10-3-2009
While the dismantling of two dams on the Elwha River are still a few years away, work has already started on this pristine waterway that used to be the home of chinook salmon pushing the 100-pound mark.
This past summer, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe filled in a 1,500-long hatchery outfall ditch built in 1977 that runs through the middle of the river's floodplain. The goal is to bring the river back to a more natural state, thus allowing water to flow through the entire floodplain, and boost fish habitat.
"This work will help restore natural-habitat-forming processes in preparation for the expected release of the 20 million cubic feet of sediment trapped behind the [Elwha and Glines Canyon] dams," Mike McHenry, the tribe's habitat program manager said in a news release. "Our goal is to reconnect as much of the historic floodplain to the mainstem as possible. We are basically undoing historic channelization actions that have simplified the river."...
Read the full story at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/othersports/2009995940_outn04.html
Fed stimulus money helping prep lower Elwha for dam removal
KONP.com, 9-30-2009
(Port Angeles) -- The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is using two million dollars in federal stimulus money to get the lower Elwha River ready for dam removal. The tribe is preparing the river's floodplain for an influx of sediment expected to come downstream when the two dams on the river come out. Tribe habitat program manager Mike McHenry says the tribe will be constructing engineered logjams, take out manmade dikes and culverts and plant native vegetation. McHenry says all the work will help improve the river's function ahead of the dams' removal…
Read the full story at http://www.konp.com/local/5133
State skips fish facility, builds new one nearby
KONP.com, 9-30-2009
(Port Angeles) -- Even though it already owns a fish rearing facility on Morse Creek, the state decided to build a new one instead. Construction is underway on the new, temporary facility near Highway 101 at Morse Creek. The state is using money for the Elwha dam removal project to build the more than two-million dollar facility. But KONP has learned the state already owned a fish-rearing facility just upstream from the new one. It was part of property sold to the state a number of years ago. The facility is overgrown but includes ponds, a moderating reservoir and an intake off Morse Creek along with a number of canals and diverting systems. State Fish and Wildlife Department officials say the facility is not adequate for their current needs…
Read the full story at http://www.konp.com/local/5134
Elwha River turns red for pre-dam removal test
By Leah Leach, Peninsula Daily News, 9-30-2009
PORT ANGELES -- Part of the Lower Elwha glowed red Tuesday during one of the tests needed to prepare for the removal of two dams up river.
The color, called "blood red" by some callers to the Peninsula Daily News who spotted it in the river at the end of Lower Elwha Road, dissipated later in the afternoon after U.S. Geological Survey scientists put a nontoxic, fluorescent dye, Rhodamine WT, upstream.
Scientists are tracking the dye, which can be detected by equipment at low concentrations, as it flows downstream, said John Clemens, spokesman for the USGS Washington Water Science Center in Tacoma.
The dye will show scientists how long water takes to travel from one point to another in the river, and illustrate the complexities of the river's structure because channels, rocks and woody debris slow the movement of the dye, Clemens said…
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090930/news/309309990
$2.1 million Morse Creek fish crib under way to preserve young Elwha River salmon
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 9-23-09
PORT ANGELES -- The state Department of Fish and Wildlife is building a $2.1 million facility to preserve the endangered Elwha River Chinook salmon.
The 5,550 square-foot facility, to be completed in December, is being built as part of the $308 million project to remove the two Elwha River dams and restore the stream back to its natural state.
It is paid for by the National Park Service, and construction began about three weeks ago, said project manager Ray Berg.
But the facility is being built on Morse Creek adjacent to U.S. Highway 101 rather than the Elwha River, which hosts a salmon hatchery.
The purpose of the facility is not to hatch the fish but to get 200,000 juvenile hatchery-born Elwha River salmon acclimated to the waters of Morse Creek every year so that they return to that stream to spawn, Berg said.
Risk to salmon
Removal of the dams, slated to begin in 2012, carries a risk that the Elwha River salmon population would be wiped out by the large amount of sediment that would be released, said the project's planning document, which was filed with the Clallam County Department of Community Development.
"Demolition of the dams is expected to initially release large quantities of sediment and create habitat conditions in the lower river that are temporarily unsuitable for salmon," it said.
The facility, by raising some of the salmon in Morse Creek, will preserve the salmon's genetic makeup in case such an extinction occurs, the document said...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090923/NEWS/309239995
Another step forward for removal of the Elwha River dams
Peninsula Daily News, 9-20-09
PORT ANGELES — Construction of a new fish hatchery, part of preparation for the removal of two dams on the Elwha River, is expected to begin sometime this fall, now that the contract for the $16 million project has been awarded.
The National Park Service’s Denver Service Center announced on Friday the award of the $16,364,094 contract to construct the hatchery on the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s reservation six miles west of Port Angeles.
James W. Fowler Co. General Contractors of Dallas, Ore., will be the prime contractor for the project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The new hatchery will help maintain existing Elwha River fish stocks during removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, scheduled to begin in 2011 and be completed in 2014...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090920/NEWS/909209996
A glass house to reap bounty for restored Elwha River
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News, 9-14-09
SEQUIM -- This winter will be a productive one, a season when healing will begin on a grand scale.
And out here off Old Olympic Highway, it will stay warm.
That's the forecast from a pair of Olympic National Park botanists who are about to move into two houses at Robin Hill Farm County Park.
Dave Allen and Steve Acker -- and the national park itself -- have waited a long time for this: construction of the 2,100-square foot greenhouse where they will grow native plants, from grasses to towering evergreens, for the Elwha River restoration project to begin in 2011...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090914/news/309149993
Union protests with giant rat display
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 8-21-09
PORT ANGELES -- About six laborers protested a job expo Thursday -- not with signs, but with a gigantic inflated rat tethered to the bed of a truck.
...The union wanted to highlight possible contractor opportunities for the upcoming construction of the new Lower Elwha Klallam fish hatchery. Union President Lee Whetham said the group was protesting Watts' hiring practices in regard to the construction of two water treatment plants as part of the National Park Service's project to remove the two Elwha River dams...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090821/news/308219988
Firms seek local contractors as they bid for hatchery project
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 8-21-09
PORT ANGELES -- Two companies hoping to win a contract to build the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe's new fish hatchery have recently ramped up their efforts to hire local businesses for the job...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090821/news/308219992
Waterfowl populations look similar to last year
By Mark Yuasa, Seattle Times, 7-19-09
...In an effort to keep the wild steelhead in the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula from disappearing forever, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is hard at work raising them in a hatchery.
The fish being raised at the tribe's hatchery aren't hatchery fish, but are part of the tribe's captive wild steelhead broodstock program.
"We've found that wild steelhead tend to emigrate to the ocean as 2-year-olds, so we'll try to rear them to that age before we release them," said Larry Ward, a fisheries biologist and hatchery manager for the tribe. "We've been successful at raising the 2005 stock to spawning maturity, so things are going well so far."...
Read the full story at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/othersports/2009496136_outn19.html
$2 million to aid Elwha restoration
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 7-1-09
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has provided $2 million to the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe for habitat restoration on the banks of the Elwha River and on its floodplain on the reservation, the agency said Tuesday...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090701/news/307019985
Lower Elwha hatchery construction to begin in the fall
Peninsula Daily News, 6-29-09
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- The National Park Service plans to begin this fall the construction of the Lower Elwha Fish Hatchery, a necessary step toward the removal of two dams on the Elwha River.
The park service announced last week that it is soliciting proposals from contractors for the hatchery planned on the Lower Elwha Klallam reservation about 6 miles west of Port Angeles...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090629/news/306299992
Book captures drama of Olympic National Park
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News, 6-25-09
SEQUIM -- The book is not what you might dread.
Olympic National Park: A Natural History by Sequim poet and nature writer Tim McNulty delves into global warming and an ecosystem filled with fragile life forms, but it is far from a dry, dreary tome.
No, the book -- a sweeping update of the original McNulty released in 1996 -- is loaded with drama...
On the removal of the Elwha River dams scheduled to begin in 2011, McNulty writes: "The Elwha offers a rare opportunity to restore a major ecosystem to its unspoiled condition . . . I can't imagine another river that holds more promise, and I can think of no finer investment than freeing this magnificent river system to simply do what it does best."...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090625/news/306259983
Lower Elwha Klallam nurture river steelhead
By Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, PDN, 6-15-09
PORT ANGELES -- The setup looks complicated: Two tables covered with data sheets, laptops, glass slides, a digital scale and instruments for taking blood samples next to the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe's hatchery ponds.Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090615/news/306159989
$50 Million Federal Dollars for Puget Sound
By Joel Connelly, Seattle PI, 6-11-09
Using his chairman's position in a key House subcommittee, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., is pushing a $50 million appropriation to pay for the federal government's role in cleaning up Puget Sound...
Dicks has two priorities with his powerful House posting.
One is Puget Sound.
The other is removal of two dams on the Elwha River, built without fish passage facilities in the 1920's, that destroyed the Olympic Peninsula's mightiest chinook salmon runs. The subcommittee-passed budget contains $20 million in the National Park Service budget for the dam removal project...
Read the full story at http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/171014.asp?from=blog_last3
Elwha River beach access to be disrupted
By Tom Callis, Peninsula Daily News, 5-28-09
PORT ANGELES -- Public access to the beach and the surf on the west side of the Elwha River mouth will be disrupted for about two to four months this summer while the National Park Service beefs up a levee prior to the removal of two dams up river.
Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said this week that the project had not gone out to bid, so it is not known when construction will start.
It is expected to be completed by the end of the summer, she said...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090528/news/305289988
Free-Flowing Rivers Back in Vogue
By Matthew Berger, IPS, 5-26-09
NEW YORK, May 26 (IPS) - It may come as no surprise that a dam impeding the flow of a major river would negatively impact fish populations, but it is only recently that benefits of free-flowing rivers in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are beginning to be valued more than those of dams.Read the full story at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46977
Back in the early 1900s, the Elwha River on the North Olympic Peninsula used to have a gene of chinook salmon that pushed the scale to 100 pounds.
In those days, anglers were lured to places like Neah Bay, Sekiu and Pillar Point clear into Port Angeles in hopes of catching these monster-sized kings.
Then in 1913, this once unblemished river that hosted all five salmon species and steelhead was blocked by the first of two hydroelectric dams, forever clogging fish migration to the upper 38 miles of mainstem and more than 30 miles of tributary habitat.
While those heavyweight king salmon have long since disappeared, fisheries biologist estimate that a small group of migrating wild fish still return to the base of the dam annually.
Possibly in the near future some of those once majestic fish runs could see a comeback as the removal of the 108-foot Elwha Dam and the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam will begin no later than 2011...
Read the full story at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/othersports/2009163689_outn03.html
Federal stimulus funds jumps Elwha dams removal date ahead a year
By Paul Gottlieb, Peninsula Daily Neews, 4-23-09
Federal stimulus money will hasten removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams by about one year after years of delays and will begin providing hundreds of jobs to the North Olympic Peninsula starting this summer, the National Park Service said Wednesday.
The $308 million removal project west of Port Angeles will receive $54 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for mitigation projects that will begin this summer.
Actual removal of the dams to restore salmon habitat will start in 2011 instead of 2012 -- a date the park service had set earlier -- and will be completed in 2014 as a result of the new funding, said U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies...
Read the full story at http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20090423/news/304239995
Federal bucks to restore the Elwha River
By Joel Connelly, Seattle PI, 4-23-09
A $54 million chunk of federal stimulus money, announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, will speed removal of two aging, salmon-killing dams from the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula...
Read the full story at http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/167119.asp document.writeln(showE2("joelconnelly","seattlepi.com","Joel Connelly"))
Huge dam removal project unprecedented in US
WaterTech Online, 3-12-09
PORT ANGELES, WA — In an effort to restore the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and its native salmon runs, a huge dam removal project is scheduled to begin in 2012, according to a March 5 Associated Press (AP) report on kgw.com...
Read the full story at http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=71567