(crow cawing)
- [Narrator] The Condit Dam held back the water
of Washington's White Salmon River
for a century.
Until one crisp October day in 2011
when engineers pushed the detonation button.
(indistinct shouting)
(explosion)
(water gushing
(crowd cheering and clapping)
- We had no idea what was going to happen,
and so we were just sort of watching
history unfold before our eyes.
- [Narrator] This was the largest dam removal
that had ever been attempted,
an incredible engineering feat.
Perhaps more importantly,
it symbolized hopes for the White Salmon's future.
- When the dam was breached successfully
and things started moving out,
it was kind of the dawn of a new era
for the White Salmon River.
(water rumbling)
- [Narrator] The hopes of river runners, biologists,
and local tribes were all staked on one unknown premise.
If the dam were gone,
the White Salmon would return to its natural state.
But no one could say for sure how long this would take,
and what it might even look like.
Now, a decade has passed,
and some of those answers are starting to be seen.
(water rumbling softly)
The White Salmon is one of the most unique rivers
in the Pacific Northwest.
(water rumbling softly)
It flows year-round from the glaciers of Mt. Adams.
The water rushes cold and fast,
through forests and farmlands, for some 45 miles.
It ends when it meets the Columbia River.
Ecologically, it sits almost exactly
on the dividing line between the wetter west,
and the drier east.
And since time immemorial,
it has been the traditional fishing and gathering
grounds of tribes such as Wishram, Klickitat and Yakama.
(branches squeaking)
More recently, it has gained a reputation
as one of the best whitewater rivers in the Northwest.
- Thanks.
- Yup.
- You guys only really need
to paddle when I'm telling you to.
(water rumbling)
Stay together.
(water rumbling)
- I've kind of grown up around this river
whether be through just kayaking or even just
playing in it when I was younger.
(water splashes)
- Well, it's funny,
but I'm only a river runner to keep up with my kids.
Okay, okay.
(water splashes)
(water rumbling)
- [Narrator] Even when the dam stood,
the upstream section was a river-runner's delight.
With playful, splashy rapids, sudden small drops,
(water rumbling)
and rock gardens to deftly weave through.
(water rumbling)
The White Salmon cuts a narrow channel
through solid basalt cliffs.
(water rumbling)
And in some spots the river is so pinched,
that boaters get out and walk,
and send the rafts on their own.
(water rumbling)
Even experienced kayakers sometimes skip the falls
to do a seal launch off of the cliffs below.
(water rumbling)
This section of the White Salmon is officially
designated as wild and scenic.
(water rumbling)
It's this special quality of the river's natural wildness
that had river runners intrigued.
(water rumbling)
If the river looked like this above the dam,
what would the rest of the river look like
if the dam were gone?
(indistinct chatter)
Would there be new rapids to run?
Waterfalls revealed?
And could they travel with the river
all the way to the Columbia?
(water rumbling)
- Right up in here we're starting to see,
some of the first spaces we've actually started to see
the river has changed and eroded some.
- [Narrator] Prior to the dam removal,
when this bridge came into view,
paddlers knew their time on the river was over,
and they would soon take out.
- (indistinct) is up, you can see up there...
- [Narrator] But from this point forward,
the river ahead is one they had only been able to imagine.
Especially, since this part of the river
was deep underwater.
(bird chirping)
This section used to be the reservoir of Condit Dam,
once known as North-Western Lake.
(birds chirping)
You can still see the line of cabins
perched above the river,
which were once lake-front.
- Yeah, it's a river again
as opposed to a lake.
Like we would be paddling against the wind here.
- [Narrator] Breaching the dam was the
equivalent of pulling the plug on an enormous bathtub.
(birds chirping)
But it wasn't the water the engineers were worried about.
(water rumbling softly)
The big unknown was what would happen
to the estimated 2.4 million cubic yards of sediment
that had been building up for nearly a century.
(blast horn honking)
(exposions)
(water rumbling)
- Watching the lake drain, it was phenomenal,
it was like watching a million years of geology
happening in the space of minutes.
(wind howling)
Football field size pieces of land and dirt
they would sort of like start to liquify
and then spin and swirl
and turn into mud and go just downstream.
(water rumbling)
- [Narrator] One of the biggest
hopes of removing the Condit Dam and draining the reservoir
was that the White Salmon
would return to its original river channel,
and that the plants and trees along its banks would regrow.
But no one knew how long this would take to recover
or if it even would.
(water rumbling)
Jeanette Burkhardt has been
at the forefront of the re-vegetation efforts.
- We have to not expect this to behave the same way as a
site that has soil, like across the river.
We have to treat
this more like a Mt St. Helens,
where you're starting at Ground Zero.
(birds chirping)
- [Narrator] With the help of more than 500 volunteers,
some 7,000 plants, shrubs, and trees have been planted.
But it hasn't been without setbacks,
(footsteps tapping)
both flood and drought have taken a toll.
(birds chirping)
But some of the hardier species planted here
have managed to hang on.
- This one here is Oregon white oak.
It has sort of leathery leaves,
that help it to be very drought tolerant in dry conditions,
and it has a deep tap root.
So, it can get water from
a long way down even if the surface has dried out.
Some of the tallest trees that you'll see
out here right now are ponderosa pines.
And just to remember if you look at this site,
there would have been nothing here.
So, these are becoming established
and the worst is hopefully behind them now
and it will be just gangbusters from here on out.
(Jeanette chuckles)
(water rumbling)
(indistinct chatter)
- We're coming up to where
Condit Dam used to be.
This is the old dam site right here.
(water rumbling)
- [Narrator] If you didn't know the dam had been here,
the former site looks simply like a narrow spot,
where two cliffs squeeze the river.
(water rumbling)
This natural narrow was the reason
that the original builders picked this spot
to build the dam in the first place.
(hammers clanking)
Work started in 1912.
(hammers clanking)
Using the canyon's own basalt to make concrete,
the Condit Dam rose 125 feet tall,
about the height of a 12-story building.
It took the original workers a year to build.
And even with heavy equipment,
it took modern workers a year to dismantle.
(cranes whirring)
When the last of it had been removed,
exactly a century had passed.
(water rumbling)
For some, their history of the river
goes much further back.
(water rumbling)
Yellowash Washines' grandparents,
and generations before them,
saw the river prior to the dam.
(water rumbling)
He witnessed it the day the dam was breached.
This is the first time he's been back.
- This river was a big part of our homeland
to what is known as the Klickitat people.
(water rumbling)
We always have this belief since
the beginning of our time here, our people,
that this water is the life
of our mother here, this ground, this earth.
(water rumbling)
When you hear the sound,
(water rumbling)
it's alive.
(water rumbling)
And it has a big meaning.
(water rumbling)
In our language it's toosh
and it's life, water is life.
(water rumbling)
So, when they took the dam out,
that was like a renewal to the way that
the creator had intended for this water to flow.
(water rumbling)
I'm just glad to be back down here.
I could just put a camp right here and just listen to this.
The sound of this river,
the one it makes the soothing, it soothes you.
(water rumbling)
Renews your spirit.
That's what it does, you know.
- [Narrator] The company that ran the dam, PacifiCorp,
still owns land below the former dam-site.
Now, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakama Nation
have the first-right to buy it.
One more step toward the cultural restoration
and stewardship of the White Salmon.
(water rumbling)
Below the former-dam site,
is one of the most beautiful secrets of the White Salmon.
A gorge so deep and narrow that it is accessible
only to those who come by the path of the water.
But when the dam was in place,
this canyon often had too little water to boat,
and too little water for salmon to swim upstream.
(water rumbling)
When Condit Dam was due
for re-commissioning in the 1990s,
environmental regulations required
building new fish-passage facilities.
The cost of updating the dam to modern standards
exceeded the value of the electricity it supplied.
In the end,
it was an economic decision to remove the dam.
But the hope for the future was an ecological one.
With the river unblocked and allowed to flow free again,
would it bring back the endangered salmon?
(water rumbling)
It's fall, and the chinook have returned.
These are bright fall Chinook,
swimming up the lower White Salmon.
They have come all the way from the Pacific,
back to the place of their birth.
(water rumbling)
This is the very last moment of their lifecycle,
where they will spawn and die.
(water rumbling)
A female will lay some 8,000 eggs,
but only about 1% of her offspring
will make it back here as adults.
Seeing the carcasses of the chinook,
you understand why this river is called White Salmon.
- Once they come into freshwater they are quickly
deteriorating and their meat is almost always like white.
They don't have the color you think of, or the salmon color.
- [Narrator] Biologists pull the carcasses
to record important data.
- We've got a freshy.
- Yeah, scale card number?
- 16107.
- Is we're gonna get a sex on the fish
- and fork length as well
as some scales and we get age data from the scales.
- [Narrator] Elise and her team have been tracking the fall
and spring chinook around since the removal of Condit Dam.
(indistinct chatter)
- I'll count from the bank to you,
if you wanna count from you to the other bank.
- Perfect, yeah.
There's definitely some redds' in between us.
Yeah, there's definitely been some pretty dramatic changes.
When the dam was removed
the first couple years there wasn't
a lot of spawnable habitat down here,
not a lot of really good gravel for them
to create their nests in the redds'.
We've since seen a lot more gravel down,
the river here lower.
(water splashes)
And a lot more fish activity and spawning
just down in the river in general.
(water rumbling softly)
- That's 16.
- 16 or 17.
- 17?
- 17, yeah.
- Sweet.
- [Narrator] The overall counts of returning salmon
have fluctuated over the past several years.
Most of the lows and highs seem to correspond
with the annual counts in the Columbia River.
- Correct.
- [Narrator] And larger-scale factors,
like ocean conditions and climate,
complicate the effort to understand
how much of a role dam removal has in salmon recovery.
Chinook return between the ages of 3 and 6.
So in the 10 years without the dam,
there hasn't been enough cycles
for biologists to see a trend,
and it will take a few more generations.
What is clear is that river conditions have improved
for the salmon to come home.
- Might be a little bit of a splash here.
- [Narrator] The White Salmon now can move at its own pace.
(water rumbling)
And river runners can move with it,
all the way to the Columbia.
- For us to be able to paddle up
all the way to the Columbia is pretty special.
You feel like you've made the river's natural journey.
It's a pretty rare experience for a river runner to actually
like run all the way to the mouth of a river,
and here we do.
(engines revving)