Undamming the Cartnel: Restoring an Endangered River

摘要

One of California's most beautiful coastal watersheds is undergoing a profound physical and ecological transformation, which happens to be California's largest dam removal project. In early August of 2015, a massive yellow hoe-ram took aim at the 106-foot-tall concrete arch of the San Clemente dam, which has been retaining more sediment than water, posing a significant seismic safety risk, inhibiting sediment flow, disconnecting habitat, and impeding threatened steelhead spawning in the Carmel River for nearly 100 years. In three weeks, the massive concrete structure that took three years to build was hydraulically hammered back down to its base below the moist bottom of the former plunge pool. While the project was initiated to mitigate the dam's threat to human safety, its design and execution has been carefully wrought by a broad public and private partnership to be, at its core, a concerted act of environmental reconciliation with significant restoration potential for the entire Carmel River Watershed.