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What follows is not the familiar cautionary tale of a decimated salmon stream in the Pacific Northwest.
This is the story of a river right here in Southcentral Alaska in need of our help. Lacking water and access to habitat after a series of hydroelectric projects — two components essential to the survival of fish — it’s unsurprising that this river’s runs are a shadow of their former size.
For thousands of years, all five of Alaska’s wild salmon migrated and spawned freely in the glacial-fed Eklutna River, providing food and nourishment for humans, flora and fauna. The first hurtful blow to the wild salmon came in 1929, when a 61-foot concrete dam was erected to fuel a nearby hydropower plant, blocking salmon from migrating past the dam to their natal spawning grounds.
A short time later, in 1955, a second dam was built upstream near the Eklutna Lake outlet, taking all the lake’s outflow from the river to fuel waiting turbines. This second hydroelectric dam made the original dam obsolete and delivered a devastating second blow to salmon by drying up the little spawning and rearing habitat the remaining salmon could still reach.
As a result, the salmon suffered, and the people lost an important resource. Today, the river’s historic productivity is virtually forgotten.
After nearly a century of being subjected to the whims of hydropower projects built without concern for their impacts to salmon or the people that rely on them, we have an opportunity to correct some of the damage.
In 2017, Eklutna, Inc. and The Conservation Fund initiated the historic effort to remove the defunct and abandoned lower Eklutna dam, which restored access to the miles of fish habitat upstream. By fall of 2018, the lower dam was fully removed. Residents of the Native Village of Eklutna and Alaskans celebrated, eager to witness the resurgence of a local salmon stream.
Dismantling the lower dam was a momentous feat, coming at a cost of more than $7 million, and the trickle of water currently known as the Eklutna River, has started reclaiming its path to the ocean. However, more is needed to return this river and its fishery to their former productivity.
We now need to provide water for salmon to continue their journey upstream and allow salmon to get past the upper dam and into Eklutna Lake so they can re-inhabit the river system in its entirety and complete their lifecycle.
The Eklutna River has endured decades of abuse, but Southcentral Alaskans are tasked with writing the end of the story in the coming years. Southcentral Utility companies — Chugach Electric, Anchorage Municipal Light and Power, and Matanuska Electric Association — are legally required to mitigate, or make up, for the impacts from their power facility and upper dam at the lake.
If we are going to be true to ourselves as Alaskans and conserve our most valuable resources, and be good neighbors to the people of Eklutna, then we must make the river whole by returning some of the water to the river and allowing fish to access the lake. The utility companies are obligated to right these past wrongs, and Alaskans and ratepayers can’t settle for anything less than a healthy and functioning river.
The coming years will prove instrumental in the future of the Eklutna River as utility companies move through the process to mitigate for their impacts to fish and wildlife. The leadership at our local utilities can ensure this moves in the right direction and at the right pace. As a ratepayer, you can play a role by educating yourself and expressing your vision for the future of the Eklutna River with your electricity provider’s board of directors.
This is our chance to do right by the Eklutna River, lead by example, and ensure the end of this story includes abundant wild salmon.
Eric Booton lives in Anchorage and is the Eklutna Project Manager and Sportsmen Coordinator for Trout Unlimited’s Alaska Program.
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