ENTIAT — Work will begin Sunday on three controversial projects to place hundreds of tree trunks in the Entiat River to improve habitat for spawning and baby salmon.

The Entiat Ranger District of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and the Yakama Nation will use a helicopter to move large logs from a staging area to two of the three projects slated for the river’s Stillwater Reach, the district said in a news release.

The work will take place between river miles 24 to 25 off Entiat River Road. Work is expected to be finished by Aug. 22.

The work involves building engineered log jams along the shoreline and in the river channel. Historic side channels that were sealed off during the area’s logging boom decades ago will be re-excavated.

Some of the log jams will be anchored with cables. Others are designed to move slightly as the river flow changes.

Downstream inhabitants fear that these log jams will break apart during high flows and wash downstream to cause flooding and other damage.

Chelan County, the Cascadia Conservation District and Yakama Nation is each building its own project, which together total about $3.5 million. The work is funded mostly by the Bonneville Power Administration as mitigation for fish lost to the federal hydroelectric dams it administers on the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Christine Pratt: 665-1173

pratt@wenatcheeworld.com