SEQUIM — Rocker Jon Bon Jovi won’t perform at the Olympic National Park’s celebration of the Elwha River dams removal project in September, said Karen Gustin, park superintendent, Tuesday.
“There’s not going to be Bon Jovi,” Gustin told about 40 attending the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce’s luncheon at SunLand Golf & Country Club.
“I’m going to put that rumor to rest,” she said.
Bon Jovi was invited to play at a celebratory concert hosted by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe at Civic Field in Port Angeles.
President Barack Obama and actor Robert Redford also have been invited to take part in the festivities planned Sept. 16-17 as the two dams on the Elwha River begin to come down in a $327 million project funded by the National Park Service to restore the river’s salmon habitat.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe invited Obama, Gustin said. No confirmation from his office has been delivered.
There also has been no confirmation from Redford.
She said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had confirmed their attendance to the September ceremonies.
U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, a major project supporter, has confirmed he will attend the Sept. 17 dedication of the project’s launch.
Dicks, a Democrat from Belfair, represents the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula.
Invitations also have been extended to U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Bothell, and Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace.
“Right now, this is the largest removal project to date,” Gustin said, as she encouraged Sequim business leaders to get involved in the gala.
“It’s not just a National Park Service story,” she said.
“It’s a conservation story that hopefully we can all have a part in.”
Park officials are hoping for attendance between 5,000 and 10,000 to the celebration marking the beginning of the project originally proposed in 1992 to improve fish passage by removing the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams, which were built without fish ladders.
“This is a project that we can feel good about,” Gustin said of the restoration of a river that was once known for legendary chinook salmon runs with fish up to 100 pounds, as the stories go.
Gustin called on Sequim-Dungeness Valley business leaders to talk to her about their ideas for a celebration in Sequim.
“We’re totally open to ideas for events here in Sequim,” she said.
Banners of the project’s logo will be posted around Port Angeles, she said, and “webisodes” about the project are to be posted in the next two weeks at the project’s website, http://tinyurl.com/26n58n9.
The commemoration may include a simulcast, which would allow others to watch it from remote locations.
Six webcams for the park’s monitoring of the project are to be installed, two of which are to be viewable on the Internet, she said, and the county and Juan de Fuca Scenic Byway Association are seeking a $329,600 Federal Highways Administration grant to create interpretive kiosks and viewpoints to allow visitors to view the dams removal project from state Highway 112 just east of its Elwha River bridge.
The Glines dam has been around since 1927, and the Elwha Dam was completed in 1913.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s creation site was flooded by construction of the Elwha dam nearly 100 years ago.
Old equipment salvaged from the two dams’ powerhouses, Gustin said, will be distributed to several places, including the Clallam County Historical Society, the park and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The dams generate about 19 megawatts of power, enough to power 1,700 homes in a year. Gustin said the loss of generation will be negligible.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
