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Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Elwha: Travel a river being reborn

Contractors used heavy equipment brought up on a barge to dig a $744,000 pilot channel in a massive delta of sediment built up behind Glines Canyon Dam. The project, done in September 2010, included clearing a 37-acre forest of alders on the delta and digging a 1,100-foot-long, 50-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep channel in the delta. The idea was to help the river stay in the middle of its channel and not hang up on either bank, so it could wash the sediment downriver.