Condit dam is breached, letting the White Salmon River run free

The Condit dam was breached today, allowing the reservoir behind it, Northwestern Lake, to drain into the White Salmon River. The dam's fall will unleash one of the Northwest's cleanest and wildest rivers, originating from glaciers on Mount Adams.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• condit dam
• white salmon river
• pacificorp
• northwestern lake
• washington
• dam

[Newton503]

@CCMochi, You shouldn't comment on topics you don't know anything about. This dam and the others recently taken out in the region were old, inefficient and their continued operation was not in the interest of rate payers. Also, the dam fed into the Western power grid, it did not directly provide power to a local community. Lastly, sport fishing employs 31,000 people in OR &WA where are they going to work without them.

[bobcatgarden]

Great news for the Salmon, and indirectly for people. Where would we be without Salmon? Maybe they won't go extinct now that they will have their breeding grounds given back to them.  This brought tears to my eyes, knowing life has been given back to a river.

[CamiloSanchez1979]

So the sediments won't be an issue?

[avcorriendo]

@oBLACKIECHANoo really?

[laxman2527]

Speaking as an engineering and someone who has actually talked with the engineers and scientists involved with this project, the people who post here making statements without a even a small bit of knowledge on the subject are just making fools out of themselves. Anyways, the main reason why the engineers decided to release the all at once is because if they were to slowly release slow enough that the turbidity and force didn't kill fish or alter the landscape, the project would drag on for yea

[oBLACKIECHANoo]

@AaleciaA HAHAHAHA, shut the fuck up you pathetic fucking hippie. When you get an IQ above 4 come back and talk, fucking whore.

[Woody615]

Mother Nature does not 'clean up' man's mess in a year and return it to a pristine state. Look at the rivers that come off of Mt. St. Helens and see how many of them are pristine 30 years after the blast. I'd love to see this area after the first major rain storm, or better yet, during next spring's thaw. Seeing how much mud and muck sluffs into the stream from the sides is a good indication of what will be happening for many years to come.

[AaleciaA]

@oBLACKIECHANoo Shut your hole.... life doesn't just evolve around humans and our happiness and greed.

What an insensetive comment, D-BAG!!!

[cember01]

Yuck! Always imagined a pristine bottom on a pretty lake. But this sharp canyon full of oozing slime and mud is just gross. What will this look like in a year? Will rains wash that mud away? Will it dry out and grow plants? Will they actively clean it...or re-shape the canyon?

[jangman69]

@pinotfilmnoir Some fish definitely died and I'm sure some of the prime spawning gravel beds were covered up. However, in the long run this would benefit the salmon as they gain access to more spawning sites. They do return to their spawning grounds, they are in the river in which they were born. It doesn't mean they go to the exact same location in the river when they were frys. As for the production of power, this dam was built in 1913... Look at the size of the reservoir, it's a joke.

[pinotfilmnoir]

I wonder how many fish died because of the heavy sediment in the water downstream. Also, don't salmon return to their spawning grounds? If the last time they spawned up stream was 60 years ago then why would they go any further past the dam? Why would we destroy a dam that was producing power? So we can become more dependent on coal or petroleum products? I believe dams are a lesser of all evils. On the other hand there is more power on the Columbia than we can even deal with.