Originally published October 26, 2011 at 12:21 PM | Page modified October 26, 2011 at 1:15 PM

Crews breach Condit Dam in Washington

Muddy water is pouring through a hole breached in Condit Dam in Washington's South Cascades.

Associated Press

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Muddy water is pouring through a hole breached in Condit Dam in Washington's South Cascades.

Officials with the dam's owner, PacifiCorp, have said it could take as long as six hours for the reservoir behind the dam to go down after a hole was breached in the dam shortly after noon Wednesday.

Black sediment and water gushed through the hole initially, splashing up the sides of the canyon along the White Salmon River.

The White Salmon River winds from its headwaters on the slopes of Mount Adams through steep, forested canyons to its confluence with the Columbia River, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest.

PacifiCorp elected to remove the dam rather than pay to install fish passage structures that would have been required to relicense it.