On June 1, nearly two decades after Congress called for full restoration of the river, federal workers will turn off the generators at the 1913 dam powerhouse and set in motion the largest dam removal project in US history.
Contractors will begin dismantling the dams this fall, a $324.7 million project that will take about three years and eventually will allow the 45-mile Elwha River to run free as it courses from the Olympic Mountains through old-growth forests into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
 

In another development, the owners of a fish farm in Washington state have asked a judge to order the federal government to reduce the volume of water coursing from the Grand Coulee Dam and killing fish on the Columbia River.
The operators of Pacific Aquaculture said in a federal court filing Friday that a staggering number of fish are dying. Large releases from the dam churn the river, dissolving gases in the water that are toxic to fish.
The fish farm is downriver from the dam.
The US Army Corps of Engineers says it is releasing the water in the dam’s reservoir in anticipation of runoff from an unusually heavy snowpack in the Rocky Mountains upriver.