Chehalis, Stay Free

During the last decade, the story of dams in Washington state has moved from "Elwha, be free" to "Chehalis, stay free."

Occurring during the removal of two dams on the Elwha River in Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, proposals to dam the Chehalis River in southwestern Washington carried no small amount of irony. Just as the follies of the Elwha dams fell aside under demolition, the state prepared to place the Chehalis under constraints similar to those that had strangled fish runs and sediment flows on the Elwha.

The surge plain of the Chehalis River.

Despite the trend of removing dams on rivers in Washington and around the rest of the country, calls to dam the Chehalis followed a series of major floods on the river. The floods, largely the result of unwise logging practices and continued development in the river's flood plain, caused extensive damage and cut off transportation routes like Interstate 5 in 2007 and 2009. A dam became the preferred way of dealing with the excessive flooding without addressing the root causes, and for a long time during the public debate, it seemed almost inevitable.

Several groups remained firm in their opposition to the dam, and their efforts recently paid off in an announcement from Governor Jay Inslee. For years, the Chehalis Tribe, the Quinault Tribe, and environmental groups like Conservation Northwest have emphasized how the dam would hurt fish runs and the overall health of the river, calling for alternative approaches to flood mitigation. During a public comment period in May 2020, the dam proposal met with heavy resistance. Then, in July, Governor Inslee ordered both the suspension of planning for the dam until at least January 2021 and the pursuit of non-dam options. This is the right decision and an important development in the life of the Chehalis River. For more information about it, read the news release from Conservation Northwest.

"Elwha, be free" became a key slogan in the push to remove the dams from that river, and it appears the desire to keep the Chehalis River free has swung momentum away from a proposed dam there.

Cause and Possibility

We're told to think big. We have a lot of practice thinking about now. However, we need to work on thinking long--as in long-term. DamNation, a documentary about dams, shows us how and gives us a sense of what is possible when we do. Check out the trailer for the film below:



Many people who study communication or engage in communication as a profession are interested in effects. They want to know what effect a piece of communication has caused or will cause. Such an approach to communication yields a lot of great information, particularly about the now and the short-term. The problem is that it tends to miss some of the bigger, long-term picture. Environmental advocates often despair over a campaign not generating immediate results, yet failing to produce an immediate effect does not mean an act of communication cannot have an impact. That's because not all reactions are produced right away. Sometimes, communication is about opening up possibilities for the future.

Rhetoric provides an opportunity to probe beyond direct and immediate effects. As DamNation, which is presented by clothing manufacturer Patagonia, beautifully demonstrates, the apparent initial failure of some communication isn't the end of the story. Rhetorical symbols like cracks painted on dams were seen as radical, fringe ideas in the 1990s. However, that symbolic act created a foothold for an idea (removing dams) that is becoming more mainstream--to the point that people are embracing and putting their own stamp on the activist art. Now, it's the dams and their environmental impacts that are questioned.

DamNation also reminds us that environmental issues are big and require long-term thinking as well. We created dams to address immediate needs but failed to consider the larger repercussions. That failure led to major problems. Clearly, we can't address the environment only in the short-term, and we shouldn't look at communication that way either.

Thinking big got us dams. Thinking now makes us miss so much. And thinking long has major possibilities.