Watch: The Un-Damming Of The Elwha River

The Elwha river in Washington State flows from Olympic Mountain to the straid of Juan de Fuca. In the early 1990s, the river was blocked to make a hydroelectric dam, which cut nearby native American from their livelihoods of salmon fishing.

It’s been 20 years now, and finally, the Elwha river dam is coming down. It’s obsolete for energy production and no longer needed. This video depicts conservationists and engineers slowly going through the process of safely dismantling the dam.

There are more than 250,000 dams in the US and many are no longer used for anything. Most of them were constructed in the 1950’s and serve basically no purpose today. It goes to show the importance of tearing these dams down, one by one…