Tenacity yields progress for Wild Sky, Elwha

Creation of the Wild Sky Wilderness Area and removal of dams on the Elwha River both have taken giant steps forward. They are still works in progress, but they passed noteworthy mileposts.

The House Natural Resources Committee Wednesday endorsed legislation to create the first new wilderness area in the state in more than 20 years. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens, introduced the first version of this bill in 2002. The legislation passed the Senate in three sessions of Congress, but it always ran aground in the House committee. Control of the gavel changed parties in January. Fellow Democrats, and a couple of Republicans, shared the moment with Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, a committee member and co-sponsor. Even those who opposed pieces of the broadly endorsed plan for 106,000 acres in eastern Snohomish County complimented Larsen on a long battle well-fought. The bill now goes to the full House.

On the Olympic Peninsula, issuance of a key water-quality permit by the state Department of Ecology advances long-desired plans to remove two major dams, the Elwha and the Glines Canyon.

The act of removing the dams will send decades of accumulated silt and sediment downstream. Before the National Park Service could proceed to let the contracts for the demolition work, the state had to certify the net effect of the purging would meet water-quality standards and satisfy other protective regulations.

Rebuilding historic chinook runs on 70 miles of the Elwha and its tributaries begins with an important piece of paper. It's now in hand.

Both the creation of the Wild Sky Wilderness and the salvaging of a river have a ways to go, but extraordinary progress has been made.