PORT ANGELES — The shabby edifice of the Elwha Dam is showing its age. It towers over the lower Elwha River valley as it has for nearly a century. It still generates electricity for the regional grid.
But the days for this North Olympic Peninsula landmark are numbered.
Generators inside the powerhouse of the 108-foot dam west of Port Angeles will be turned off June 1, Olympic National Park spokesman Dave Reynolds said.
Three-and-a-half months later, a National Park Service contractor will begin to tear it down.
“Everything is on schedule for Sept. 17 for the first concrete removed from the dam,” said Reynolds, during a tour of the Elwha Dam and powerhouse on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of site preparation that will go on before that as well.”
The Elwha Dam and its cousin — the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam eight miles upstream — will be taken down over three years as part of the $327 million Elwha River Restoration Project.
The federally funded project is intended to revive the Elwha watershed’s severely depleted salmon run.
Both dams were built without methods of fish passage.
“These [Elwha dams] are perfectly safe, but you can see the wear and tear over 100 years,” Reynolds said.
Small cracks are visible in the concrete inside the Elwha Dam’s powerhouse and mossy, terraced facade.
Inside the control room, dam operator Paul Wesley monitors antique gauges juxtaposed with high-tech equipment.
“It’s kind of a blend of the modern and the old,” Wesley said. “She is going on 100 years old, and most of what you see is original equipment.
“These switches, gauges — some of these gauges here have patent dates in the 1800s. Some of this equipment will be going to museums.”
Thomas Aldwell built the Elwha dam in 1913 to supply electricity to Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Poulsbo and the Navy shipyard in Bremerton.
The Glines Canyon Dam and hydropower project was built in 1927.
From inside the control room, Wesley monitors the water levels of the reservoirs behind both dams — Lake Aldwell and Lake Mills.
“We control [reservoir levels] within four or five hundredths of a foot,” Wesley said.
During World War II, dam operators kept a machine gun in the control room as an extra blanket of security against sabotage.
One day, the operator was fussing with the gun and accidently pulled the trigger.
The bullet holes are still visible inside the concrete walls of powerhouse.
The manager “decided to leave it there because it is kind of historic,” Wesley said. “You can just imagine the surprise of the worker.”
Dam operators keep track of the latest weather forecasts to predict changes in the river. A sudden snowmelt could turn a gently-flowing river into a torrent, in which case the spillways would open.
“Right now, we’ve got 157 inches of snow waiting to come down,” Wesley said. “It will come down. We just hope it’s not all at once.”
In 2007, an unusually wet and warm weather system from the tropics drove the river flow to 32,000 cubic feet per second. By comparison, the Elwha River usually flows in the 1,000 to 2,000 cubic feet per second range.
Hydroelectric dams make electricity by funneling water through a turbine, which spins a generator. Power from the Elwha Dam’s generators move upstairs in pipes to a high-tension room.
“There’s six transformers, which convert 6,600 volts into 69,000,” Reynolds explained.
Dam operators use what water is available to produce electricity while maintaining the level of the reservoir.
“If the flow is more than that, we have to spill,” Wesley said.
The Elwha River dams combine to produce 19 megawatt-hours of electricity, which is enough electricity to power 1,700 homes or 40 percent of the Nippon Paper mill in Port Angeles, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
“We think about the ecological costs,” Reynolds said.
Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Mont. — the contractor doing the actual dam removal — will use the lower portion of Lower Dam Road as a staging area for the project.
Clallam County commissioners will consider a three-year closure of Lower Dam road just beyond the Elwha Dam RV Park on Tuesday.
The Bureau of Reclamation has operated the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams since they were purchased by the United States in 2000.
For more information on Elwha River Restoration, visit www.nps.gov/olym.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
