May is especially nice on the Olympic Peninsula. You get some sunny and warm days, the Olympic Mountains are still snow-capped, and down at sea level the plants are in bloom. People are happy that the gloom of winter is over and summer is within sight.
I’ve been taking short trips to checks out places in the area. Not a lot of changes, but the trips are worth it.
Locally, the Elwha Dam, “The First American Dam to be Dismantled” is complete. This opens up the Elwha River to free and unencumbered access for the salmon into the tributaries in the Olympics. Personally, I regard this as one of the most important endeavors we’ve ever taken, and I’m old enough to watch the construction of dams on the Columbia.
As expected, the accumulated silt behind the dam is causing problems. Mountains go up, the weather blows them down, the dust settles, the rivers take the dust away, and deposit it in the ocean. Nature has a pretty good recycling program, though she moves at nerve-wrackingly slow speeds sometimes. We screw that system up with dams.
Anticipating the silt, a new water plant was built to supply Port Angeles with fresh water (we drink snow-melt here). Not quite good enough, though it’s being handled. The silt discharge right now is messing up the returning steelhead salmon, but experts are dealing with it. There are huge “issues” going on here, but so far it’s working.
One day Grand Coulee and Glenn Canyon dams will have to come down. Not in my lifetime, but what is being learned at Elwha will go into those projects.