Undamming the Elwha, the documentary
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- Опубликовано: 28 май 2012
- Undamming the Elwha follows the journey of the Elwha River from the day it was dammed to the day it was set free once again.
This KCTS Television original documentary is a co-production of KCTS Television and EarthFix. Undamming the Elwha is broadcasting on KCTS 9, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Idaho Public Television and Southern Oregon Public Television. Financial support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
For more information visit: earthfix.us/elwhadoc
For those that don’t know, the river was opened for native fishing for the first time in many years. The numbers are steadily growing and there is reason to be optimistic.
Thank You to all the generations of tribe members for fighting for so long to bring the dams down.
I hiked 35 miles up the elwa river valley with my brother, my cousins and my uncle a few years back. After the dams were removed. It was beautiful
Nature is beautiful... and top lot have plans to keep you off such lands in their Wild Lands Project, look it up on line for North America to see where you will and will not be allowed to go, pure evil these inhuman's.
So much good done here. 🙏🏻
Beautiful clean water. I live on the Tennessee River in north Alabama. Our dams are essential for our area for electricity and flood control. Even before the dams, the Tennessee was muddy and dangerous. We are blessed to have our system, but my grandma said it was beautiful before the dams.
right its essential what does that say about us ummmm not much
These doccos on dam removals in America, (there's quite a few of them), are some of the best viewing on youtube. Very nice to see the indigenous peeps recall old stories, the amaaaaazing fish and beautiful rivers restored. Thank you for posting
I just hope we don't cripple our power grid. Many of the removed dams generate large amounts of energy.
@@GeorgeZ213 Wouldn't have a power issue if we just went nuclear
a documentary about a "undamming" and only a few seconds of the actual process
love the people love the ones who are lead by God and connected to nature and have great wisdom--a rare thing now of days. lots talk about global warming while failing to understand that every foot of black pavement, parking lot, streets etc. are causing the planet to heat up and taking the trees and plant life is starving our enviroment of needed oxygen and other important gases for our healthy living.Thanks for this great video.
Let's ignore the fact we've come into existence during the inter-glacial period that is 150,000 years overdue it's cessation. You'll be praying to your sky daddy when the ice age returns. You can outwalk global warming, but you can't outrun a creeping glacier. Survival of the worst case scenario of global warming is over 98%. Survival of the return of the ice age will be in the 20% mark. I've never understood why people fear the immediate short term small level changes yet forget the sword of damocles hanging over our heads.
It’s 2019. I would love to see an update of how the river repaired itself.
Ow its great, a couple roads are washed out along with a highway bridge that has to be replaced. and the Indians have a lawsuit against the state for flood damage, ow im part Indian so not politically motivated or racist meant. but it was their idea. Also the salmon haven't come back and we lost all the lake trout.
No Shit??
@@worlock081475 Well I don't think if you heard well what the lady from the national park service said :"..probably it's gonna be ugly for a while but that's start of the healing process". Nature will find its way.
@@borizovskimilan It was fine the way it was, in balance and full of trout and other fish. I fished all along that river and now...... nothing and it killed all the lake trout. So we lost a clean power source and killed alot of fish also destroyed habits, Heck win win for libs! Not to mention the billions infrastructure, bridges and possible loss of work when they have to close the elwa bridge for replacement along with the park that's almost unreachable do to erosion all along the river.
@@worlock081475 tbh it wasn't fine the way it was, becasue the dam is going to fail eventually. it is a cut last long or short.
It’s 2021 let’s see how the river is doing!!!
no luck were still here
The people who initiated,conceived and executed this exciting project deserve the highest praise.Once again the USA can show the world the way!Let this be merely the beginning and not the conclusion.Thank you for the video.
Squarerig the usa show the world the way, is that why this showed a lake and a mountain that arnt even in the usa
Awesome !
Nice upload, thanks...
That was a beautiful documentary.
You certainly can’t blame those who built the damn, and the same to those who want it gone. Just the times a changin
So good!
Seeing the elder get to observe the restoration of her ancestral land made me teary.
In the early 1990s we developed the idea to use dehydrated "bricks" of fish to substitute for the nutrition missing due to the lack of salmon in rivers. Hopefully that idea is being used here to greatly accelerate the health of the habitat and salmon runs. It is very heart warming to realize our work may affect so many streams like this.
i wish they did that in canada, the paper mills and mines ruined most of it
@@jefflund9134 I hope they leave our power infrastructure intact.
They should mass plant mushrooms on both banks of the river. Mushrooms can grow almost anywhere near water and especially thrive on contaminated soil. They can leach the nitrates right out of soil and even break it down in rocks. And mushrooms create a web-root environment which is conducive to growing grass and trees.
@@sethbaker5261 Wouldn't it be great if we could go to a river that needs it and plant mushrooms, maybe 10,000 of them, to help clean the river? I'd be on the first plane to help.
This is a beautiful story
a very interesting report....
Perfect video！
Perfect Video would of got rid of the Dam! This is just talking about it!
@drinny26 I hope you receive this well. In 2005 I spent a month at a camp building cabins in northern Vancouver Island as an "adult" of 25. The owner of the camp was a man that was about to retire from a life in forestry and conservation in the Canadian government. Over the time I was there he explained their forestry departments philosophy on "scatterplot" forestry and also on what the Canadian government's philosophy of the nitrogen cycle was. The nutrients the salmon deliver to the upper regions of the ecosystem are not replaceable. They come from fish or no where else except some birds that might feed on them and carry their fasces higher up. Salmon that find the rivers as ladders are the only ecological ladder to fulfilling the life cycles. I wonder if there is some truth in there.
Great video😊
I wonder if a damm like former Moser-Damm in Schaffhausen, which was anything else then tight, could be a solution for turbine and fishes! Basically it was a damm made by attaching big sand stones on steel bars, plugged into the river bed to construct a semi tight damm to force some water towards a channel for the turbine house, while approx 30-70% of the water still went down the usual river bed, so that it must be assumed that fishes still could go up and down, as could fine sediments.
Thank you for this! We became aware of the Undamming of the Elwa when we watched the Next Best West documentary....
Ok it's 2019 let's see a new documentary on it today
Yes, one without blaring music.
After replacing the green dam power with coal, global warming has caused all the salmon to leave from hotter water. Now there is plans to rebuild the dam.
It's 2020 now
Search "rising from the ashes"
ruclips.net/video/9t_m1myVBBQ/видео.html here it is in 2020
I'm happy the nice old lady is happy :).
To me they shouldn’t have gone overboard trying to introduce fish too early. As the sediment naturally cleared the fish would naturally migrate further upstream as they searched for uninhabited spawning areas. Sometimes people overthink a natural reconversion. It would only support what has recleared naturally and gradually.
kevin stonerock I agree, it would have been interesting to see what happened with salmon naturally regenerating. They always had the back up of farmed fish to restock.
Kevin and real..... interesting conversation im no wildlife expert but i think salmon like to imprint on the place they were hatched they may not go further than that up stream but l would like to see the results of this study. ..go trout
mick jones yes they do, here in NZ we have land (and sea) based salmon farms some release fish and have a trap to catch the returning ones.
captain obvious nice one born everyminute i bet ur form up north to rofl
Wonderful video. Thank you.
I'm so glad that they removed almost all trace of the old Elwha dam. I was afraid that it would be like the Sunbeam dam near Stanley, Idaho where they just breached a hole to let the river flow, but left a good section of the dam standing.
Such an interesting report. A few thoughts from an ecologist social liberal: modern way of life led to the climate warming we know. It takes ca 15,000 years for the CO2 to disappear from the atmosphere. The Paris agreement 1.5 objectives is equivalent to the amount of CO2 that can’t be eliminated, hence an irreversible climate warming. A European produces 10T of equivalent CO2 p.a. An American twice the amount, a African 5 times less. Fossile energy and the reduction of its use is key to stopping climate warming. hydropower is the cleanest energy source. I would be curious to see how the power generation in Port Angeles has been substituted? Yes the heritage and fish background is very important. But at some point, we have to pick our fights. Which one did we pick?
What a shame losing such a great truly renewable energy source because once the dam is up and running the energy is almost free. Now that power source has to be replaced with a Cole fired plant.
There is still hydro dams just not located on that river. The dam was privately owned and helped power the paper and pulp mills towards the end of both their life spans. Do a little more research then assuming. Washington state is a hydroelectric state.
Best weed I ever smoked, late 1970,s
Heartwarming and great to see healthy change for mother earth and her occupants
@assassinlexx If he lives in a red state in Murica he already is in a third world country ass. Ya see ass, by all standard statistical measures, most all red states are, at best, low grade second world from education to child poverty rates to worker pay/safety/job security/benefits. But, MAGA, right ass?
@@mikelouis9389
Liberals import Mexico.
Then they will complain that their power is no longer affordable.... Cant have it all!
I don’t understand why this isn’t viral
This should happen more often
Its is, they are removing up to 7,000 dams....
2022 watching.
Any updates after 10 years?
Nature always finds a way and humans need not tell nature how it should recover itself. Humans think we know better than nature.
So you going to lick your ass instead of use paper? Its not as simple as that. Nature is without pity, there is nothing wise or wonderful about it..We are no better. It must be a compromise. Balance.
@@taketimeout2share there will be a balance when humans destroy ourselves and the environment gets back to .... normal, its doesn't need us never has.
I don't know when they did this, but in Japan where I come from, they have been doing this for many years!
Can you please refer me to some videos. I enjoying these doccies
Removal of the dams has resulted in the release of millions of cubic yards of sand and silt to the nearshore waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Specifically, sediment released during dam removal resulted in over a meter of sedimentation in the estuary and over 400 meters of expansion of the river mouth delta landform.
So maybe, removal should have been lengthened, rather than the rate of 1.5 ft a day..
It probably would have happened naturally had there never been a dam, it just would've taken place slowly instead of essentially all at once.
@@southboundeightyone4958 Right. Which would have allowed more harmonious, natural processes to occur. Humans, and our systems are powerful!
That problem is temporary
qq
FISH FARMING HAS CREATED DEVASTATING RESULTS ALSO!! WHO WERE THE IGNORANT SCIENTISTS, POLITICIANS, FARMERS, AND RECREATIONAL CAPITALISTS WHO FORGED THESE DISMAL FAILURES!!
It sure didn't take us long to change that beautiful landscape to what it is now....dirty water and hardly any wildlife. We are god's people.
dont add god im sure he hates us if there was one should not he wipe us out to save the world rofl
Perhaps we need to remove the locks on the Missippi they keep water from entering the Atchafalaya River basin. The natural flow of the Mississippi River is to want to enter the Atchafalaya. Baton Rouge and New Orleans could keep that section open as a canal as the River changes course. Let nature have her way.
If we reduced the human population to under 2 billion or less that might be a good idea.
Wonderful video. Any updates????
Its nice to see these dams being taken down. I understand why dams where put up but people don't understand what it does to nature and how it changes it.
Thank you for at least mentioning the challenges of trapped sediments in the reservoirs. Most people do not grasp that this is sometimes worse than leaving a dam. .... sometimes!
Damns are strong, machines are powerful. Seems mechanically feasible to place a permanent sediment machine to move sediment slowly each day from above the damn to below the damn. Lift the settlement with backhoe type machine or suction pumps. Don't let sediment keep building up. Move it.
@@DaveS-pq4jf I’m assuming you don’t like electrical power or indoor plumbing then?
@@BrookieCooki84 I am assuming you realize that a dam isn't the only way to get those things. Dams do have one good thing going for them. They put out next to no carbon.
Hopefully, this fusion plant being built is successful and just the first of many, Working fusion power would be the biggest boon to humanity in a long, long time.
@@Elthenar I’m assuming that you also understand that hydro power is one of the most efficient, reliable, and cost effective solutions to energy production. Not to mention like you say essentially carbon neutral. Far more reliable than your funny wind turbines. Those damn things are a joke. Solar is okay but dependent on sun, which we can’t control. Same as wind.
@@BrookieCooki84 Pump the brakes, sporty spice. You are making bold assumptions thinking I am a wind turbine hippy.
No, I am looking towards particle physics. It's very possible we will have functioning fusion in the near future.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
If we can get fusion to work, then our energy and carbon problems are solved. No need for dams, funny wind turbines, solar power or even many uses of fossil fuels.
5yr follow up would be lovely.
4:56 that isolation stick tho
My father works here, he does a very nice job with the place.
Fernandez? Any relation to the Fernandez in Sekiu?
thank yew
The Walla Walla River was like that up until the 1950 that's around the time they started putting dams on the Columbia River.
Didnt know fish pet carriers existed... and im not disapointed
It’s 2023 I’d love an update
Thanks for all your doing to restore the river's to there formal glory how about an update
some said that it took out some roads and bridges and killed all the fish so not well.
@@Obnoxiouswolf2 It never killed the fish at all, they are coming back. It was never going to be an over night solution, they even say that in the video. But it was a solution and it has worked. So what if it took out a couple roads and bridges, those can be rebuilt. Once an ecosystem goes extinct, its never coming back
I hope it worked. We need to remove the dams all over. Its 03/20/2022. The Mississippi needs to flow free ...we need to restore the land. Help the water flow an we need to fix our planet.
i can honestly say that i will be showing my grade 8 class this documentary. covers multiple levels of curriculum
That sounds great if you also show them what dams have done for flood control, agriculture and reliable inexpensive energy.
Michael Downs yeah right. Lol. This teacher isn’t going to show that. Ruins the narrative.
@@KnightrunnerMRA in all due honesty it shows many practical aspects of society. why we need to think about long term impacts, technological advances, positives and negatives of hydraulic engineering, ecosystems you name it. my class enjoyed it
Jason Steppler
Of course they did. Any video is better than class. I remember what 8th grade was like. Do you show videos on the benefits of hydro electric dams or dams in general or just the negative?
@@KnightrunnerMRA it is important to understand the positives and negatives of any human intervention or engineering project to better design and build future projects. this videos gives examples of engineering projects that were designed prior to better understanding/care for environment. the purpose of education is not to to portray any form of engineering, science or political body with biased one sided information and to explore both sides of the story.
Damn.
What did the first years of returning salmon look like as they tried to swim up the trickling stream?
Nicely done USA
Can we get a link to new video discussing if it worked or not? I feel like a time traveler right now, lol
ruclips.net/video/VipVo8zPH0U/видео.html
Spoiler: it worked better than anyone imagined.
It would be terrifying to work on the crew that is on a barge, chipping away the dam holding the water you're floating on.
Right. That’s a big no for me.
It’s now 2021 where’s my updated on elwha river ?
All dams are destined to become waterfalls.
You do realize that 70 to 80% of people will die if that happens. That is a lot of people to kill over a fish!!!!
@@HMDickson just like thanos wanted
Re-wilding.
Almost every group of people ever who lived in this world has a sob story. I click to watch a undamming of a river. That is not what I got.
Thanks for the warning
A study like this is going to become ever more important in the coming decades.
Why? You think controlling the waterways is something new and not something we've been doing for over two thousand years now? You might want to read about the ancient Romans, or the ancient Britons draining the swamps. We've been at this game a long time now.
whats the song named at the end?
i worked great the elwha is thriving and the fish are back as well as the crab the trout swam in from other streams through the salt water
ஆருயிர்க்கெல்லாம் அன்பு செலுத்தவேண்டும்... நாம் தமிழர்...
Why does my face leak when I watch this story.
2021 still looking for an update please
Now April 2020 please update.
Please tell us (me) that you made an update video to this. Did it work? It's 2018...fingers crossed!!
Wasn't there some popular rock lyrics in the 1960's that mentioned "damn this dam"???
Did they find an alternate source of electricity?
Wind and Solar. It is 2021
@@montiro8999 They didn't document it.
Wind and solar are a joke for creating electricity and more detrimental to the environment than dams.
not a viable source of power. try charging your tesla with wind and solar
dam dam
We need an update
So environmentalists decided they dont like clean renewable energy anymore i take it
In that case i retract my above statement.
they have been convinced nukes are clean and renewable despite the obvious failures and no solution to the dangerous waste problem.
@@xxxmikeyjock the waste isn't likely to be a problem long term. The are working on funding ways to use the spent duel
A small flicker of hope too little too late.
Any updates for the salmon in 2019?????
someone posted a link about 7 comments back....
Was anyone else bothered by the golden retriever, chained up in the rain, while the elderly woman talked to the interviewer about the poor salmon?
Yeah, I wondered about that too
😅😢😢
You
I guess we’ll just have to burn coal.
sadly
How do you figure? These dams hardly made enough power to make them worth the effort.
www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-4
alison webster lol all this venom...
I am all for dam and renewable removals....I am a coal miner
Solar
We must rebuild the dams. But with a "fish first" design.
Plant trees on all that sediment. Will slow erosion and will have a handful of other benefits!
the reason for the loss of the fishery was partly the dam, but the main problem was allowing the Indians to commercially sell the salmon they harvested by thousands. Yea, the dam was something that created a problem, the reason for the rearing ponds not sustaining the runs of salmon again went back to the tribes not caring for the salmon.
Haven earthquake watch dutchsinse he can predict them take care much love
It's a shame that in 2019, we're still too stupid to have free, clean electricity AND fish, it has to be one or the other. They should have had fish ladders from day 1, but why were they never added? That would solve the fish problem. The silt problem is solvable too I think. What if there was a smaller dam before the main reservoir, that was just there to trap the silt? Have a bypass channel, so when the river is clean it could be diverted past the filter dam, allowing it to be drained of water and cleaned out with excavators and dump trucks.
the dam was the product of a private developer, sorry to break it to you, but the motivation to make some money as well as electricity did not allow for something so frivolous as a fish ladder...
you think you know more than the massive wildlife ecology and engineering research that went into these decisions?
@@michaelbonnet590 Yes.
Seeing as they are tearing out all the damns with absolutely no thought to replacement sources of energy, what happens when there isn’t enough to power there casinos? Or energy is so expensive as to make it prohibitive to even turn on ones light.
Now October 2021 any follow up be nice to know the end
almost ever dam removal video i watch they say something like what happens on such and such river will serve as a model and no one has demolished a dam this big and this has never been tried before but the dam is only slightly bigger then another one that they removed and they do the removal pretty much the same way with only minor differences.
THEY say a lot of things.
@@Miatacrosser and your point is?
@@678friedbed the boogeyman that has scared an entire generation into paralyzed victimhood. The sky is falling. There's Nazi's under every rock!(when really there are Commies under there. But same thing). There's no Salmon here! They're everywhere in Oregon rivers, but they're not here. Waaaaaa!
That THEY. The Government Liars
Stop watching dam removal videos....
Im afraid everything on utube is the biggest, best ,and you won't believe this! ...... but some people do👎
Really wish the engineers would've had the foresight to build hatches for the fish to make it up the river when they were building the dams. So many ecosystems around the world rely on Salmon spawning, and so many have been utterly destroyed all so humans can live a little easier. But, that is the story of the Earth every since man stood upright.....
They did....it didn't work.
They should show what it’s like in 2021
Now let's work on the Columbia River!!
Im sure the people who will now get flooding ever few years wont be feeling so warm and fuzzy about this. A lot of rivers were dammed to prevent spring flooding. Fish ladders get the fish up river.
Easy solution, live in a flood plain, deal with the flood, otherwise move somewhere else, namely where they won't get flooded
What people? The Elk? The river is almost entirely in a national park
If only Sacagawea could see it now. She would understand. I can't believe that the Western Europeans will be opening up the rivers again. What next? Unfencing the Prairie and seeing Bison and Lakota migrations again.
That would be beyond hope. But it's nice to dream.
It's 2019. Is there a documentary to show us what happened?
ruclips.net/video/9t_m1myVBBQ/видео.html
12 June 2019, 7:00 PM
Some one made a comment wondering if the salmon would ever make their way back up the river above the dams. Considering that the salmon did not magically appear there in the first place but originally had to, at the least, work their way further up the river; it is certain they would do it again. Nothing wrong with trying to speeding up the process and it appears it will work.
Curiosity means I will now have to research to see how things have gone.
Didn't do an in-depth research project on this, but did find that according to National Geographic, as of June 2, 2016 the river is thriving. Hope this helps.
@@adm5209
Thank you. My research showed the same thing.
While I have no problem with things like dams when they benefit humans; when their usefulness is over with it is only right to undo them since dams do not last forever.
Hopefully, if they knew then what we know now, they would have installed a bypass that the salmon could use to get around the dam and the salmon could have continued as usual and humans benefited from the electricity generated and the fresh water supply as well.
Is that Gary Busey at the podium at 18:45 ? :P