RETURN TO US: RESTORING ALASKA’S EKLUTNA RIVER (SHORT FILM)

This film tells the story of The Conservation Fund's partnership with the Alaska Native Village of Eklutna to remove a deadbeat dam and restore Pacific salmon.

REMOVING A "DEADBEAT DAM"

The Eklutna River was once a prolific salmon-producing river that provided a rich subsistence resource to the Eklutna Dena’ina people, who located their village on Cook Inlet’s Knik Arm near the mouth of the Eklutna River. Although the Native Eklutna people are still there, the salmon are greatly diminished, due to a succession of water diversions and hydropower projects which cut off water flow and fish passage in the Eklutna River.

The first major barrier to fish and water on the Eklutna River resulted from construction of the Lower Eklutna River Dam and its associated hydropower plant in 1929. This dam, located in a 300-foot deep steep-walled canyon, was used to divert water into an 1800-foot long tunnel to a powerhouse located along Knik Arm. This facility provided electricity to the City of Anchorage until 1955.

When the Eklutna Power Project came online in 1955, the Lower Eklutna River hydropower project was abandoned, leaving behind an unmaintained 70-foot tall and 100-foot wide concrete arch diversion dam that quickly filled with sediment. Now, the abandoned diversion dam impounds approximately 230,000 cubic yards of sediment and remains a major impediment to full ecological restoration of the Eklutna River.

Recovery of this important salmon stream habitat is vital to maintaining abundant salmon populations in Knik Arm and Cook Inlet in general.  Cook Inlet supports the largest urban area in the state with over 60 percent of the state-wide population, and fishing pressures on salmon can be high. Additionally, salmon support a wide variety of other wildlife species, including seabirds, marine mammals, and bears.

The Alaska Federation of Natives—the largest Native organization in Alaska—endorsed the restoration of the Eklutna River in March of 2021 by passing a resolution for a free-flowing Eklutna River to support the recovery of Pacific salmon and benefit Dena’ina Athabaskans from the Native Village of Eklutna.

“Alaska’s rivers and streams have provided nutritional and cultural benefit to Alaska Native people throughout time immemorial, and the Eklutna River is no exception. We support the efforts to restore traditional rivers and streams for fish and wildlife habitat, traditional subsistence uses, and sustainable natural resource development, and in particular, the efforts of tribes like the Native Village of Eklutna.”

—Ben Mallott, Alaska Federation of Natives Vice President

OUR ROLE

For five years The Conservation Fund and our partners worked diligently to remove an abandoned dam along the Lower Eklutna River near Anchorage that was crippling salmon populations.

We teamed with Eklutna Inc., an Alaska Native village corporation, to raise $7.5 million for one of the most ambitious habitat restoration projects ever attempted in the state. Eklutna and its subsidiary, Eklutna Construction and Maintenance, LLC, worked over a three-year period to remove the dam and in 2018, the last piece was taken down. For the first time in 89 years, five species of Pacific salmon in the Eklutna River can once again move upstream, providing the rich subsistence resource on which the Eklutna Dena’ina people have traditionally relied.

WORKING WITH WELLS FARGO

To help secure lands sacred to the Dena’ina people and traditional Alaska Native home sites, Wells Fargo donated 143 acres of culturally and historically significant land adjacent to the village of Eklutna to The Conservation Fund for permanent preservation. Semi-subterranean dwellings (nichilq’a in Dena’ina Athabascan)—identified as among the few remaining undisturbed Dena’ina habitations within the Municipality in Anchorage—and storage caches found across this property have also been preserved. This land is another piece of an ongoing effort by the Fund to protect and restore the Eklutna people’s culturally and environmentally important lands, a partnership which now includes the ongoing removal of the lower Eklutna Dam

“It’s exciting how fast this is coming together and a testament to how excited people are – when you see this level of cooperation. And what’s particularly cool is that the Native Village of Eklutna has a construction firm that is performing the dam removal, creating jobs, creating local economic opportunity.”

—Brad Meiklejohn, Senior Representative, Conservation Aquisitions

LEARN MORE