Run free, White Salmon

HUSUM, Wash. -- For almost a century, Condit Dam has harnessed the rapid flow of the narrow White Salmon River in Klickitat County, providing electricity for about 7,000 homes.

Since it was constructed in 1913, the 125-foot-tall dam has blocked salmon and steelhead from the upper watershed and depleted the lower river of naturally occurring sediment beneficial to lamprey.

But now that's all about to change.

By this time next year, the concrete diversion dam that spans 141 feet across the river will be a memory.

After the removal of the Glines and Elwha Canyon Dams on the Olympic Peninsula, Condit is the third largest dam removal project in the country. Work on the massive Elwha River project also began this month.

Portland-based owner and operator PacifiCorp decided to decommission Condit rather than spend an estimated $100 million for fish passages that would have been required to renew its operating license to generate about 15 megawatts.

PacifiCorp's plan to dismantle Condit is spelled out in a 1999 settlement agreement with conservation groups, state agencies and the Yakama Nation. But fear of losing the economic activity provided by the reservoir behind the dam led to a decade of opposition from both Klickitat and Skamania counties as well as area cabin owners.

Opposition fizzled last November when the utility agreed to pay the counties $675,000 to offset the impacts, also giving Klickitat County water rights in the area and completing some bridge reinforcement work.

Over time, inflation has upped the cost of dam removal to $32 million from about $17 million.

Fish and habitat restoration sparked the decision to bring Condit down. Salmon are a sacred staple in the Yakama diet. Steelhead and lamprey are also culturally important to the tribe.

"No matter what happens, I want that dam out," said Yakama fisherman Johnny Jackson, who lives in a ramshackle home on a tribal fishing site where the White Salmon pours in the Columbia River. "I want the fish to go back up to where they used to go."

With the dam gone, more than 33 miles of habitat will open to steelhead and about 14 miles for threatened lower river chinook salmon, said Yakama fish biologist Bill Sharp.

Last week, fish biologists with the Yakama Nation and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife plucked returning fall tule chinook from the lower White Salmon and moved them above Condit Dam, where the eggs they lay will be safe from the roughly 2.2 million cubic yards of sediment that will flush downstream once the dam is breached.

A handful of men scooped chinook from nets, put them into a tank in a boat and trucked them upriver about seven miles for the release. The goal is to move a total of 500 chinook upriver before the dam is breached.

"The 100 years this dam has been in place is just a blink in the eye for the Yakamas, and they're excited to welcome these fish home," Sharp said.

Standing along the river's bank, Yakama tribal member Emily Washines said her family still has land along the river, where her grandfather was buried. "Basically we're just excited because we've been deprived of this resource as tribal members," said Washines, a habitat restoration specialist with the tribe.

Washines displayed a beadwork project of her mother's, Tribal Councilwoman Stella Washines, that will depict a tribal fisherman atop a scaffold pulling up a salmon from a traditional pole affixed with a gaff-style hook.

"People say 'it's not finished yet,'" she said of the beadwork. "But I tell them it's like this river, it's a work in progress."

Earlier this month, a crew began chipping away at the center of the dam with plastic explosives and a backhoe. The intent is to punch a 13- by 18-foot drainage hole through the dam's 90-foot thick concrete base. Workers get through about 5 to 8 feet of concrete a day. After each blast, a backhoe scrapes the crumbled debris from the hole.

Presently about 30 feet of the way in, crews are expected to finally punch through by the end of the month, said PacifiCorp spokesman Tom Gauntt.

Once the dam is breached, water will flow at about 10,000 cubic feet per second, a rate equal to about one quarter of the historic 1996 flood. "It will be a bit more turbulent and have a bit more sediment in it," Gauntt said.

The 92-acre reservoir behind the dam will empty in about two hours.

Crews have also dredged the river bottom at the base of the hole so sediment or any other debris won't obstruct the drainage flow, he said.

Water will then flow through the breached dam until May 2012, when work will begin to dismantle the dam one section at a time.

After the dam is dismantled, the concrete will be used to fill a long ditch with a wood bottom that formerly carried water to the dam's powerhouse, Gauntt said.

Nearly a century's worth of sediment will be carried from the reservoir downstream. Some fishermen and water enthusiasts fear the sediment may destroy the lower river.

But Gauntt said flows will carry most of the sediment through to the Columbia River, where most of it will settle in a pool behind the Bonneville Dam.

"It's not going to be a clear stream for a while, that's why we're doing it this time of year," he said.

Having sediment rush down the river isn't entirely a bad thing, Sharp added. "That dam has been in since 1913, so we know that this lower river has been starved for sediment and gravel," he said.

Sediment is important to lamprey survival, he explained.

By August 2012, the river should be open for boating and work will begin to restore native habitat, Gauntt said.

"By that time, we will know what we have," he said.

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 509-577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.