PORT ANGELES — They were seven miles removed from the speeches, prayers and performances by bureaucrats, politicians, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members and musicians that took place Saturday at the Elwha Dam.
More than 100 celebrants at the daylong Elwha Central at City Pier celebration watched a live feed of the proceedings marking the end of the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams while sitting comfortably in white plastic chairs or milling around slowly, examining booth fare.
For two hours, they viewed images from the ceremony projected from a laptop’s Internet connection on a 6-foot by 6-foot screen planted on a stage where musicians usually sing.
The transmission would not have been accomplished but for a military feed from a government satellite, said Scott Nagel, organizer of the Elwha Central event sponsored by First Federal.
Pier participants didn’t seem grumpy about the omnipresent static from the broadcast feed, which almost sounded, appropriately, like rushing water cascading over the ceremony speakers’ words of joy and solemnity.
“I’m pleased they are doing this,” said Karen Winther, 73, of Port Angeles, who grew up on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“It’s so crowded at the Elwha Dam.”
Key to the $325 million Elwha River restoration project is the $27 million three-year removal of the dams, which began Thursday at Glines and begins Monday at Elwha Dam.
Rather than have the dams generating power, which they did until June 1, “I’d much rather see the salmon running,” Winther said.
Jeff Wolin, also known as “Ranger Jeff,” introduced the two-hour ceremony on the City Pier stage with a simple but weighty refrain: “Here’s history in the making.”
Selling commemorative Lower Elwha Klallam T-shirts was Elaina Begay, 29, a Navajo tribal member who moved to the Lower Elwha reservation three years ago to work as a gaming agent for the tribal gaming commission.
“It’s a moving thing,” she said of the day’s events.
Although from the Southwest, Begay said she felt a kinship with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe that is reflected in the beliefs of her own tribe.
“We like to leave our land the way it was,” she said, asserting dam removal will return the river to the way it was meant to be: its original setting.
“It’s good for everyone,” Begay said. “It’s the circle of life.”
Among those on the Pier was at least one doubter: Harry Bell, chief forester for Green Crow Corp., a Port Angeles timberland and wood-products company.
Bell, also a member of the North Olympic Salmon Coalition, suggested tearing down the dams might not bring back the river’s salmon run.
He said there might be cheaper solutions to the river’s minuscule fishery than the $325 million Elwha River restoration project.
“We have a fish problem,” Bell, 66, said. “We eat too many of them.”
He didn’t show nearly the enthusiasm that Nina Serrano, 77, did for the day.
She and her husband came all the way from Oakland, Calif., solely to take part in last week’s celebration of the dams’ demise “because it’s so historic,” she said.
With more than three dozen booths, Elwha Central had the feel of other street fairs that are held at City Pier — with one notable exception: the plethora of nonprofit kiosks that far outnumbered food and other for-profit booths.
There were 21 nonprofit kiosks, including Whale Trails, Olympic National Park, Wolf Haven International and the North Olympic Chapter of the Society of American Foresters, which Bell staffed.
The nonprofit booths represented the largest number of nonprofits that Nagel, who organizes October’s annual Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival, said he had ever seen at a City Pier street fair.
Mickie Vail, Nagel’s operations director, said organizers made an extra effort to draw nonprofits.
“We wanted to get an educational element, not just dam removal,” Vail said.
“We did pretty well, I think.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
