PORT ANGELES — It seems to some like a perfect chance for a cash-strapped state like Washington to make some money.
When the two Elwha River dams are torn down beginning in September, can logs that build up at the Elwha River bridge on U.S. Highway 101 be sold commercially to benefit the state’s taxpayers?
In a word, no.
State fish and wildlife managers say the logs are key to the restoration of the Elwha River and are far more important for fish habitat and forest regeneration than they would be as fodder for the commercial market.
The state Department of Fish & Wildlife codified that mandate in the state Department of Transportation’s five-year hydraulic permit that allows Transportation to unjam certain bridges that are clogged with logs, Chris Keegan, Transportation’s Olympic Region operations engineer, said Tuesday.
“In the permit, we have that we will keep it in the river system,” Keegan said.
“It says that during times of high flow, we can pick them up and set them down on the other side and let them continue on through.”
The cornerstone of the $351.4 million river restoration project is the $26.9 million dismantling of the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams, intended to unblock the waterway to provide passage for and replenish 10 stocks of anadromous salmon and trout.
When the dams come down beginning in September, waterborne logs will rush downstream, scraping away at the earthen banks where the Highway 101 bridge crosses the river, potentially undermining the road just west of its intersection with state Highway 112.
Built in 1925, the 450-foot-long bridge will encounter riverflows and buffeting by woody debris in a manner never seen in its 86 years once the dams, completed in 1913 and 1927, are brought down and their two reservoirs — Lake Mills behind Glines and Lake Aldwell behind Elwha — are drained.
Plans are for an excavator to pluck stuck debris from one side of the arched bridge and drop the stumps and logs on the other side of the span to continue their journey downstream, Keegan said.
Highway 101 is four lanes east and west of the bridge and two lanes on the bridge itself.
The excavator would take up one lane of the span, causing traffic delays, Keegan said.
The downstream rush will include trees and stumps that have collected behind the dams over eight or nine decades, said Olympic Region Bridge Superintendent Ron Bashon in a Jan. 19 e-mail to Jeff Sawyer, Olympic Region environmental and hydraulic manager.
“Large amounts of wood released at one time tend to build dams in the channel,” Bashon said in the e-mail.
“I see this like the upper Chehalis River in 2007. It was the release of debris-dams holding large amounts of wood waste that destroyed the bridges.”
There also are other ways to reroute the rushing logs from the bridge banks, the National Park Service has suggested.
The Park Service said in 2005 that the bridge is “subject to flooding,” according to the agency’s record of decision for the final environmental impact statement on the dam removal project.
It was signed by then-Pacific West Region Regional Director Jonathan B. Jarvis, who was sworn in as Park Service director Oct. 2, 2009.
The 14-page record of decision lists “add debris deflectors to the in-water piers” that would route debris away from the banks as a mitigation measure.
But that could create a log jam in the middle of the bridge if just one log floats downriver and gets hung up crosswise on the bridge’s arches, Keegan acknowledged.
River restoration project manager Brian Winter said woody debris has been passed over the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams and floated downstream ever since 2000, when the federal government bought the dams for $29.5 million.
In addition, waterlogged logs already on the bottom of the two reservoirs are not about to float to the surface.
“Some will wash downstream, some will be used in the revegetation program on the hills and slopes,” he said, citing “nursery logs” in which new plant life grows.
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Senior staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul. gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
