Russell Busch has published “Tribal Advocacy for Elwha River Dams Removal on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula” in the Golden Gate Environmental Law Journal. Here is a taste:

“Torpedo the dams, full speed ahead!” This inversion of Farragut’s famous order seemed appropriate when offered at a celebration of the Elwha Act’s passage, but turned out to be premature. Dam removal is now scheduled to begin in 2012, twenty years after passage of the Elwha Act and a century after the first dam blocked the river.

For the Elwha Tribe, which advocated and worked so tenaciously for dam removal, the success of its efforts will be affirmed only when the United States has actually cleared the way for the salmon to begin reclaiming the spawning grounds of their ancestors. In the meantime, the Tribe, like the fish who keep faith by returning each year to the base of the lower dam, waits patiently for the day the dams finally come down.