Blasting of Elk Creek Dam will begin

Only a third complete, the dam on a branch of the Rogue River will be ripped apart to let coho salmon go upstream

An explosive epilogue to one of Oregon's most maligned public works projects gets under way today.

This afternoon, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start blasting away at part of the partially built Elk Creek Dam on a tributary of the Rogue River north of Medford.

The corps spent about $114 million on the dam before lawsuits to protect fish stopped its construction more than 20 years ago when the dam was only one-third complete. Since then, the agency, Congress and Oregonians have debated what to do with the concrete plug over Elk Creek, an important spawning stream for fish, including threatened coho salmon.

The dam was authorized by Congress in 1962 as part of a three dam flood-control project for the Rogue Valley. The other two dams, Applegate and Lost Creek, were finished with relatively little hullabaloo.

But in 1987, a federal judge ordered the corps to stop additional work on the Elk Creek Dam until further environmental review could be done, a decision that was debated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Over the decades untold numbers of judges, senators, governors and local politicians have railed against the dam as a congressional pork and fish-killing project or hailed it as a flood-stopping, water-saving dam crucial to the Rogue Valley.

All that shouting and litigating will culminate in a shower of concrete and dust when workers for McMillen-McDougall of Tualatin, which won the $7.9 million contract, begin returning the creek to its original alignment and gradient.

Over the next two months, the workers will pack 2,777 pounds of explosives into 271 drill holes, blasting away the dam layer by layer.

By the fall, fish should be able to make their way past the dam instead of being trapped below it and carried upstream in trucks as they have since 1992 at a cost of about $150,000 a year. Currently, the creek is diverted into a tunnel that passes under the dam.

"It's not only the best biological alternative; it's the most fiscally responsible alternative," said Bob Hunter, a staff attorney with WaterWatch, which has advocated for breaching the dam.

The spillway and left abutment, about 15 percent of the dam, will be removed while leaving the right abutment intact should future generations see fit to complete a dam.

"We want to do as little damage as possible to the remaining surrounding structure," said Scott Clemans, spokesman for the corps in Portland.

Clemans said it would cost between $8 million and $10 million to repair the work being done this summer and another $84 million to build the dam up to its original planned height of 249 feet.

Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com