HRC or member-contributedLearn more about the history of the Elwha River dams, the challenging removal process, and some of the incredible early restoration progress post-dam removal.
“Dams were once thought of as permanent features on the landscape, but the Elwha shows us that these projects do in fact have a finite lifetime. Many dams provide important benefits for our communities — electricity, flood control, water storage, and even scheduled releases for whitewater recreation — but sometimes those benefits do not outweigh the costs and in those cases removal of the project needs to be part of the discussion. In the case of the Elwha the discussion was a long one but the results are nothing short of amazing.”
