Actually the statement about the environmental impact statement not being written yet isn't true ... I have read it. Also the 50 to 100 years is off too ... in the impact statement, they estimated that healthy runs of fish could be in the river within 20-25 years of the removal of the dams. Although if you are talking about the huge Chinook (like 100 pounders) that used to return to the elwha, their genetics are most likely gone, but there have been some in the 50's spotted at the lower dam supposedly. The plan that I read involved restocking the elwah with native strains from other OP rivers. The frustrating part of the whole debate is that the funding actually has been granted to remove them by the federal government in 1992, but our buddy Slade Gorton refused it, because he thought that it would set a precident for removing dams for fish, and bring up debates about removing columbia dams ... which even if they got brought up, I think that it would be a tough argument to win at this point with the amount of electricity generated by those bad boys ... But the elwhas are an entirely different story ... they should come out ... soon!!! If you want to read about it here is a website

http://www.elwha.org/river.htm

later,
Matt