In south central Washington, ~ 3 river miles upstream from Columbia River confluence, near WA/ OR border Riverbend was hired (by J.R. Merit, Inc. Dam Removal General Contractor who was hired by PacifiCorp) to oversee the general contractor’s implementation of the environmental restoration aspects of this project. Riverbend was directly responsible for the evaluation and design of restoration features in the White Salmon River and its on-site tributaries, design of woody debris structures in the river, design of riparian area restoration, grading and stabilization of sediments left behind in the former reservoir. Riverbend’s subcontractors took care of all the water quality monitoring, and all the aerial photography and LiDAR mapping. Riverbend provided consulting engineering support for many other smaller tasks over the project’s duration, from designing a bypass water pipeline, to evaluating the stability of relic bridge structures in the river, exposed by the elimination of the reservoir. Condit Dam is the largest concrete dam to be removed in the US for environmental reasons. The dam removal was featured in Patagonia’s Dam Nation movie released spring 2014 (and edited from Ben Knight’s office in Telluride) Riverbend Engineering’s staff was on-site in full force for the for the epic explosive dam removal in October of 2012.
