Removal Of 168-Foot Matilija Dam, Clogged With Silt For Decades, Inches Slowly Forward

[hatrack]

Nestled in the mountains of the quiet California town of Ojai is Matilija Dam, which has become a poster child of the national dam removal movement. At 168ft high, the dam towers above Matilija Creek. Since the dam’s construction in 1947, an estimated 8 million cubic yards of sediment have clogged Matilija reservoir, rendering it useless for water storage and flood control, while trapping sediment that would have flowed into the Ventura River and then fed Ventura’s coastline nearly 16 miles downstream. “It doesn’t have any purpose anymore,” said Peter Sheydayi, the design and construction deputy director of the Ventura County Watershed Protection District (VCWPD), the government agency that owns the dam.

Paul Jenkin, an avid surfer with a background in ocean engineering, noticed the city of Ventura’s acute coastal erosion and singled out the removal of Matilija Dam as one of the long-term solutions to addressing the problem. Starting with bumper stickers that read “Give a Dam, Free the Sand, Grow the Beach!” in the mid-1990s, Jenkin started a grassroots campaign to remove Matilija Dam and revive Ventura’s shoreline as well as restore endangered Southern California steelhead trout’s spawning habitat in the Ventura River watershed. If the dam is taken out, it will be one of the largest dam removals in California history.

If the dam is dismantled, the ecological benefits to the Ventura River watershed would be huge. The reservoir has inundated 27 percent of the endangered steelhead’s original spawning habitat in the Ventura River watershed. With the dam gone, more than 31 miles of steelhead spawning habitat would be restored and 116 miles and 154 acres of the Ventura River and its tributaries enhanced. The dam’s removal would also release approximately 4 million cubic yards of sediment, reversing downstream channel degradation and restoring channel bed elevations to roughly pre-dam levels in about 10 years.

Over the past two decades, Jenkin’s effort has gained national traction, with influential environmental groups, government agencies and Patagonia, among others, joining the campaign and propelling the project into the national spotlight. The 2014 documentary DamNation prominently featured Matilija Dam at the end of the film, showing an anti-dam activist painting a pair of scissors cutting the concrete wall – a symbol that has come to represent the dam removal movement.

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https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2017/08/07/one-of-the-largest-dam-removals-in-california-history-inches-forward

[Botany]

1. What were seeing with dam removal is that a river will restore itself ...."

Free the rivers.

http://projects.seattletimes.com/2016/elwha/ Freeing the Elwha River in Washington.

[hunter]

2. The removal of the San Clemente Dam in Monterey County, CA, went well.

This winter's heavy rains stirred things up a bit in unexpected ways, but that's natural.

With San Clemente Dam gone, are steelhead trout about to make comeback on the Carmel River?

CARMEL VALLEY — Brian LeNeve has been fishing for almost 70 years, but he hasn’t dropped a line in his hometown river for the last 15. He says fishing in the Carmel River isn’t worth the risk of harming a steelhead trout – a threatened species.

But this past winter’s pounding rains, coupled with the 2015 removal of the San Clemente Dam, have given hope to LeNeve and other local fishermen that steelhead could make a comeback on their beloved river.

“This year was a great year for fish,” LeNeve said. “Most people are thrilled the San Clemente Dam is gone because it is one step to turning the steelhead numbers around.”

For centuries, steelhead thrived in this region. But the San Clemente Dam, built in 1921, blocked the river’s flow and undermined its ability to maintain an optimal environment for steelhead.

--more--

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/07/with-san-clemente-dam-gone-are-steelhead-trout-about-to-make-comeback-on-the-carmel-river/

Project site:

http://www.sanclementedamremoval.org/

[Judi Lynn]

4. Great article, and dam info. link. Yay, steelheads. Thank you. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. You've given us something so useful to watch.

Will be keeping this place in mind, hoping for news from this minute forward.

So much needed wellness can be returned.