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On August 6, an agreement was reached to begin removal in 2008 of the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam in Washington state. The biggest dam removal project ever, the $182 million Elwha Restoration Project will reopen 70 miles of prime salmon and steelhead spawning habitat in one of Washingtons legendary salmon rivers.

Congress approved the dam removals in 1992, and subsequently the most in-depth science done on any dam decommissioning began. The project will be exhaustively studied, including the tracking of six million cubic yards of backed-up sediment.

Fish biologists estimate that the current annual wild run of fewer than 5,000 fish is 1.3 percent of its historic level in the Elwha. Scientists will be studying the hoped-for return of steelhead and five species of salmon to the rivers. I put my faith in the fish, said George Pess, a fisheries scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Look at Mt. St. Helens, it took the fish in the rivers there just a few years to recolonize. If we let the natural processes work, I think well be OK.

Robert Elofson, 51, a fisherman who began challenging the re-licensing of the dams in 1976 and became the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribes restoration director, said, I should see the first harvest about the time I retire. I want to hike up to Elkhorn [30 miles up the Elwha] and catch a 10-pound coho.

Over 500 sizeable dams have been removed in the last century in the U.S., 185 of them since 1999. In Ventura county, the Matilija Dam is scheduled for removal in 2013 as a result of efforts by the Surfrider Foundation and others. Progress is also being made on Klamath river dams, but politics and business maneuvers take time.