Today on a Local radio talk show I heard a proposals to place a dam on the Upper Chehalis River above Pe Ell. This Dam would flood the forest land up the canyon to limit flooding in the low lands. I was wondering what the people of this board though of this Idea?

Dumbest

Idea

Ever

DAM!

Dumb
Ass
Morons!

The Facts they are using to try and justify the dam are built up and False. The way it sounds to me, the factions are going to write off the the wild stealhead that spawn up there. They are using lower energy cost to draw in support from locals. They also say once the Lake full of water and Fish, people will come from all over to fish. Which will boost the economy in the small local towns."Ya Right" As a member of the upper Chehalis river fisheries Task Force, I have walked many miles of this upper river counting spawning reds. With out these upper reaches, these fish will have no where to spawn. What do you guys think will need to be done in order to stop this dam from going in? I have know idea other then writing letters, and letting people know the facts.

I don't see it happening.

The state annhilates a great sport fishery on the Cowlitz in the name of saving mythical native/wild fish but will turn around and write off "known" wild salmon & steelhead on the upper Chehalis? I don't buy it.

The flood of litigation that would follow from fishery conservation groups would hold up the project for years, if not decades anyhow.

It's not like 50 years ago when a corporation with $$ could ramrod through a dam regardless of the resistance encountered.

Who comes up with this crap?

My response? Can you spell T.P.U.

Humm... well lets just hope for the sake of the fish this don't happen !!!!

wow,
I am truly amazed.........
well maybe not, has wdfw endorsed this proposal yet?

Peace
Fly

Im not sure if it has been endorsed yet !! But Lewis County PUD is leading the efforts from what I hear.

All you have to do is follow the $$$$. Power and public Utilities.

What I want to know is how they can even think about doing this Nathan when they closed the river to springer fishing because not enough for escapement goals. 900 fish!

How many are going to escape a dam? I guess they can be like the mighty Elwha fish and slam their noses against it.

lewis county that great government that allowed all that building in the flood plane along i5 ,like walmart ,now wants to build a damn. must be the dumb leading the blind

Loser County. Go figure.

I'd lay down money that the local yokels are all for it.
"It'll create jobs!"
The usual mantra for myopic corporate handouts.

...especially in a place where all the living wage jobs have been all wiped out by not acting wisely and sustainably and through incompetent, corrupt mal-management from a local government run by an uneducated good ol' boy network that is on par with something out of backwoods Alabama ....... or Haiti.

B-Run's sketch on Stam's thread sums Loser County up nicely.
I've been on Injun Reservations that are run with more common sense, foresight and honesty that Lewis County.

If the Chehalis river system terminated at the county line, I'd say go ahead and let them cut their own throats. but unfortunately it passes through two more counties (4 if you count the headwaters in Cowlitz and Pacific Co.'s) and meets the ocean.

Cowlitzkiller, can you believe this, I agree with you. And yes the stuff going on on the cowlitz sticks in my craw as well.

I have to get my 25 cents in here.

I live just downstream of this PeEll area & where there was lots of flooding last December, (I didn't get effected however). I understand some of your concerns on fish habitat, but unless you live in this area & understand what the consequences are, don't jump at your own conclusions before all of the cards are on the table.

This flood appears to have wiped out the complete 2007 wild Chinook brood year eggs in the upper Chehalis, both the South Fork & mainstem. Mud & silt 2 feet deep. Spawning gravel totally washed out & moved miles. The flooding of 2006 was not as dramatic, but it also did havoc to both the Chinook & Coho eggs because it was later in the year by a month.

IF there was a water retention barrier in place then, (you notice I did not call it a dam as that seems to be a NO-No word), this devastation MAY have been averted to some degree. Also those of you who wanted to fish lower down in the river after the flood were plowing mud with your props for months later. Something has to be done this time around & I hope that finger pointing with nothing accomplished is not the end result.

With modern invocations & human ingenuity many good things can be accomplished. I am not talking about civil engineers straight out of dental school here, but using level heads, (& some without college degrees) to make descisions, good things can happen for all concerned.

Also don't point fingers at the residents, implying that they are at fault for the totally damaged houses they used to own & saying it is their fault in that they sould have known & moved. Would you move off property owned by your family for generations? Same can be said for the city people who now live in a crime zone that was a nice location a few years ago.

Hope I didn't start a new can of worms here, but please don't shoot from the hip with a scattergun unless you totally understand the whole community’s needs & all the consequences.

Hey, I like to fish also, but unless you/we make provisons for a viable wild salmon run in this river, we will never even have hatchery fish here. As there is currently only ONE Chinook hatchery on the Chehalis system, (Bingham Creek) & it can not help the upper watershed. It can not even recover enough returning fish for needed escapement to get egg take.

The 2008 Chehalis Chinook season is closed because of not enough hatchery fish are expected to return. This same senerio could come into play next year or two, but then because of not enough returning wild adults because of the previous flooding.

We have to look at the overall picture & make good plans for the future.

I haven't processed the dam idea yet. I haven't had time to think about it. I have thought about the permitting process for something like a dam on a river like the Chehalis. Believe me the real decisions will not be made by civil engineers, especially ones with dental degrees (funny one, BTW). Once the decision is made for a study of the dam effects, then an engineer will deliver the bad news, and the biologist will deliver even worse news. Although I agree with you that the firm required to carry out the work will probably not spend enough time on the grade talking to the farmers and townsfolk about how the flood waters were actually working (heights, flow direction, velocities, etc.). But basing it on the generally accepted means of broad brush stream modeling.

Then it will be the job of the politician, farmer, and the Lewis county backroom "power structure" to convince WA state (DOE, DNR, DFW, DOT), and a plethora of other advocacy groups, and random activists, that the dam's net effect is minimal, or mitigation will be in place in place (in some fashion).

Wow! It will take a long time. There will probably be a requirement for some minor funding out of Lewis Co, and chances are, they won't be able to bankroll it anyways.

Machinist, as I stated I was there and have been here my whole life born and raised in Winlock and I know a ton of the families that lost it all, as I'm sure you do as well. I just cant seem to grasp how they plan to stop the the amount water that we had in December. I know the area in Question very well, ("its my stomping grounds grew up running those hills"). I just feel that in order to stop the flows that we had the dam will have to stretch a few miles, Because of the way the hills lay there are no constants up there.

On another note, I heard a argument that made a little bit of sense let me here what you guys think of this. So if the dam was built beyond the spawning grounds. "which is way above the talked about spot for the dam" it would have little affect on spawning fish. Also this person says that the dam would provide cooler river temps in the summer which would help smolts make there trip out to sea.

Nathan, Wasn't this flood they are trying to stop from happening again with said dam caused due to an erosional slide from clear-cutting totally blocking the river for some time then letting go? Seem I saw a picture of said area on the upper Chehalis on the web (perhaps here on PP) Does anyone have this pic from an archive?

How is a dam gong to stop an erosional slide from Clear-cutting the forest?

I don't think you are going to see a dam the court battles over it would be enormous. I am sorry for those that lost everything in the floods but when you build inside the flood plain that is a risk you take. I feel that people are reacting rashly to the devastation and trying desperately to come up with solutions to prevent this from happening again. But we are failing to realize that you can't prevent natural disasters. Look at the major flooding that hit the Nisqually in 96 that river is damed yet it still flooded. As for a dam cooling water temps I don't see how impounding water will cool it. It has been my experience that still water heats up much quicker then moving water.