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Glen Canyon

Hayduke

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You guys like to discuss dams. Think there's any chance they'll ever decommission the dam creating this 180-mile sewage lagoon?

Rethinking the Colorado
Glen Canyon Dam idea worth discussion
By Peter Lavigne


Since he was a boy in the 1960s, gazing at an exquisite but soon-to-be-flooded canyon, Richard Ingebretsen thought about restoring Glen Canyon - along with the Grand Canyon's beaches and riparian ecosystems - by eliminating the reservoir behind the Bureau of Reclamation's controversial Glen Canyon Dam.

Ingebretsen wasn't alone. Writer Edward Abbey called Glen Canyon the heart of the Southwest, more important even than Grand Canyon. The burial of this unique world wonder was controversial from the start of the dam project in the 1950s.

Today, in a era of dramatic water-cycle fluctuations and proposed changes in the uses of the Colorado River watershed, it is useful to examine how one of the West's most controversial dams has evolved.

The dam straddles the Arizona-Utah border, backing up the Colorado River to form Lake Powell.

In the years since filling the dam's reservoir, which commenced in 1963, David Brower's book about Glen Canyon, "The Place No One Knew," Abbey's writings and speeches about the travesty of the dam, and Katie Lee's photographs, stories and songs of the canyons kept alive visions of Glen Canyon that most people assumed were irretrievably lost.

Not so for Ingebretsen. His boyhood memory of the magical place stayed with him, and the loss it represented to humanity stayed as well.

In 1995, Ingebretsen, a medical doctor and physics professor at the University of Utah, decided to do something about the destruction of the canyon he loved as a child. He founded the Glen Canyon Institute and started calling similar-minded people to join the cause. Among them were Dave Wegner, then head of the Bureau of Reclamation's Glen Canyon Ecosystem Studies Unit; David Brower, a world-renowned conservationist who always regretted his failure to stop the completion of Glen Canyon Dam when he was executive director of the Sierra Club in the '60s; and Lee, an actress, singer-songwriter and author with a passion for the Glen Canyon that was gone.

Helped by many key Colorado River figures - including former Clinton administration Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Dan Beard - the institute decided to advocate "decommissioning of the dam" so it could operate with "run-of-the- river" flows. The idea is simple: Liberate the stunningly beautiful series of deep canyons from the weight of the 180-mile-long ringed reservoir that is Lake Powell by letting the river run unimpeded through new diversion tunnels at the base of the dam. In a run-of-the-river operation, the reservoir is no more, a free-flowing river is restored through Glen Canyon and its dozens of unique side canyons come back to use by tributary streams and wildlife, as well as human explorers.

In addition, the Rainbow Bridge National Monument would no longer be flooded by the slackwater pool of the reservoir; badly needed natural river flows would be restored to Grand Canyon beaches, and with them the fish and wildlife depleted by the continually varying flows from the Glen Canyon Dam; and upwards of 1 million acre feet of water wasted annually by evaporation and seepage from this giant pool in the desert could be freed for downstream uses. As a bonus, in high flood years like 1983, when a dangerously full reservoir came within inches of topping and washing out the dam, the new diversion tunnels could be temporarily restricted for flood-control purposes.

Stung by the failure of appeals to beauty and preservation in the early 1960s and the corresponding lack of any environmental impact-assessment process in those pre-environmental-law days, the Glen Canyon Institute in 1996 began a citizen's environmental assessment of the dam, the reservoir and operational effects on the Grand Canyon. Eight separate studies over the next few years firmly grounded the movement in its battle to change the operations of the dam - in science, law and logic.

Public and political reaction to early proposals by the institute to decommission the dam was immediate and blunt: "Crazy," "it will never happen," "insane" and "pipe dream," opponents said. Yet the ideas attracted a small but significant segment of popular support. Gatherings in Salt Lake City and other cities throughout the Southwest to talk about the dam started attracting hundreds of people, and soon more than 1,000.

Threatened by the excitement the institute was generating, politicians convened a carefully scripted congressional hearing on Glen Canyon Dam in 1997 to denounce the idea of draining the reservoir. In following years, they supported legislation forbidding the Department of Interior from spending any money to study decommissioning the dam.

As support for changes in the Glen Canyon Dam operation grew, clarity of purpose became paramount for the institute. Many members of the public, and even members of the institute, never quite understood what "decommissioning" meant, and most assumed the group was advocating the removal of Glen Canyon Dam. In reality, that option just didn't make sense, for financial and many other reasons.

"Originally, we wanted to simply reopen the old diversion tunnels made when the dam was built," said Pam Hyde, a Flagstaff attorney and the first executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. "Rich was having dinner one night in 1997 with Floyd Dominy, the head of the Bureau of Reclamation when Glen Canyon Dam was built, and he mentioned this possibility to Floyd. Floyd told Rich, 'That's crazy. We filled those tunnels with concrete and rebar and they'll take forever to drill out. Here's how to do it.'"

"It was one of those moments," Ingebretsen now says. "Neither one of us had anything to write on, so Floyd grabbed a napkin, and sketched out the place to drill new diversion tunnels through the soft Navajo sandstone. I kept the napkin and now have it framed in my office."

Ten years later, the conversations around the future of Glen Canyon and the Colorado River have changed dramatically. The Glen Canyon Institute and other groups are now advocating for establishment of a Glen Canyon National Park. Others support restoration of Glen Canyon and the Colorado River. An international coalition is making headway on restoration of the Colorado River Delta in Mexico, and several indigenous organizations are actively working on water supply, energy and environmental justice issues.

Even the Bureau of Reclamation stated last summer that it was highly unlikely that Lake Powell would ever refill. As Ingebretsen says, "With 6 million new people in California, and with all the water in the upper basin that they are going to use, Lake Powell is not going to be there. They can only fill it with surplus water - and there isn't any surplus water."

Ingebretsen believes the Glen Canyon Institute's biggest accomplishment of the last decade was "getting the debate going."

"Honestly, before, there was no other side to it. No one ever talked about it. Now, there's a voice out there that there are problems, that there is a better way."

Ingebretsen calls the decision to base the institute's effort in science and law, something originally proposed by Dave Wegner, "absolutely critical. It was essential; it gave us credibility and science to study and debate." The data the group presented 10 years ago about demand and water losses "is now accepted as fact," Ingebretsen says. "We were dismissed at first. & People who called us crazy 10 years ago are now calling and saying, 'You know, you were right.'"

The future of Western water is ultimately about choices, and the current fight about the proposed new pipeline to bring water from Lake Powell to St. George, Utah, is a great example, Ingebretsen says. "This is a debate that has gone on since time immemorial: What do we do with our lands? What is the best use of our lands? Where do we develop? Where do we not?" says Ingebretsen. "Someone has got to stand up constantly and say, 'We have to think through this, we've got to think of our kids, we've got to think of the communities of the future and do we want to do this?'"

It's probably safe to say that the Glen Canyon Institute will remain a small, relatively unknown think tank. It is also safe to say the institute has permanently changed the conversation about water on the Colorado River - and that it will continue to influence the life and future of the river and its watershed for many years to come.

Peter Lavigne is founder of the Rivers Foundation of the Americas; director of the Colorado Water Workshop; and professor of environmental studies at Western State College in Gunnison, Colo.
 
Decommision of the dam is probably worth discussion.

I remember seeing that dam and swimming in Lake Powell back in the early 80's. It is a good lake for recreation and fishing.

Would decommisioning the dam provide for as much recreation as there currently is? Are there any threatened or endangered species that will benefit?

The thing about removing the dams up here in Washington is the fact that the Salmon are threatened and breaching 4 dams on the Snake River would help the salmon out.

The main opposition to breaching the Snake River dams is from the grain growers. They use the river to transport their grain on barges. Without the dams the cost of transporting grain will be increased.

What would be the main opposition to decommisioning of the Glen Canyon dam?

It seems like the Glen Canyon dam is probably producing a lot of power. Is that the case? Is it an option to replace the power lost by decommisioning with nuclear plants or solar?
 
When we visited the Glen Canyon Dam in 1993 as part of a geography field trip, the dam had still not payed for itself in the form of hydropower generation. Not sure if this plateau has been crossed since.
 
Think there's any chance they'll ever decommission the dam creating this 180-mile sewage lagoon?
I'd say no chance. I'm thinking municipal water will be a bigger value of that reservoir than power in the future. Too many folks living in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tuscon, etc that are gonna want to be able to get a drink or take a bath. Plus, the HUGE amount of recreation that occurs there would have lots of folks against getting rid of the dam.
 
1_pointer: At some point, there will be no water to store in Glen Canyon. Upstream users will increase storage capacity to keep more of the water granted them in the Colorado River Compact. Downstream demands will increase to the point that there will not be any "surplus" to store. Lake Powell will reach dead pool at some point. It might not happen in my lifetime, but I'll bet it does in yours.

BigHornRam: That stuff doesn't agree with me any more. I'm more of an iced tea guy these days.
 
Going, going....

Upper Colorado River Basin Drought

The Upper Colorado River Basin is experiencing a protracted multi-year drought. Since 1999, inflow to Lake Powell has been below average in every year except one.

In the summer of 1999, Lake Powell was essentially full with reservoir storage at 23.5 million acre-feet, or 97 percent of capacity. Inflow to Lake Powell in 1999 was 109 percent of average. The manifestation of drought conditions in the Upper Colorado River Basin began in the fall months of 1999. A five year period of extreme drought occurred in water years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 with unregulated inflow to Lake Powell only 62, 59, 25, 51, and 49 percent of average, respectively. Lake Powell storage decreased through this five-year period, with reservoir storage reaching a low of 8.0 million acre-feet (33 percent of capacity) on April 8, 2005.

Drought conditions eased in water year 2005 in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Precipitation was above average in 2005 and unregulated inflow to Lake Powell was 105 percent of average. Lake Powell increased by 2.77 million acre-feet (31 feet in elevation) during water year 2005. But as is often the case, one favorable year does not necessarily end a protracted drought. In 2006, there was a return to drier conditions in the Colorado River Basin. Unregulated inflow to Lake Powell in water year 2006 was only 73 percent of average.

Water year 2007 will almost certainly be a year of below average inflow. The current projection for spring runoff into Lake Powell is only 50 percent of average. Projected inflow to Lake Powell for the entire 2007 water year is 68 percent of average. With 2007 projected to be a below average inflow year, one sees that over the past 8 years (2000 through 2007, inclusive) inflow to Lake Powell will have been below average in all but one year (2005).

Reservoir storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead has decreased over the past 8 years. Reservoir storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is currently 49 and 52 percent of capacity, respectively.

May 4, 2007
 
Hayduke- You appear to have a bit more trust in the 'system' than I do. I imagine the politics and money that is found in the large metro areas of Vegas, Phoenix, and Tuscon may have something to do with the amount of water reaching the reservoir than I do.

Just wait until a period like the early 1980's comes back. There was enough water in the Great Salt Lake that it was being pumped to a basin in NV to elleviate some of the flooding. It won't stay droughty forever...
 
Here we are, 11 years later. I ain't shriveled up and died yet. Tick-tock, tick-tock....

Lake Powell is about 48 percent full, and Lake Mead is about 38 percent full. By the end of the year, Powell’s levels are projected to fall 94 feet (29 meters) below where the reservoir stood in 2000 when it was nearly full.

Water levels continue to drop at Lake Mead, Lake Powell
 
The river has been depositing silt into Glen Canyon/Lake Powell since impoundment. Lots and lots of silt, 45 million tons/year. It is filling the canyon beneath the reservoir, so the reservoir is getting shallower @ the bottom, while the surface level recedes. As water storage goes, Powell is an evaporation lagoon w shrinking capacity. Unclear if and how that silt would affect decommissioning the dam.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_the_Glen_Canyon_Dam
 
Someday it will happen, but not in my grandkids' lifetimes, or probably their grandkids'. Anyone expecting the beauty of Glen Canyon to return will be badly disappointed. Look at the "bathtub rings" around Powell and Mead where the reservoir used to be. That's what will be exposed in the few places not buried in silt. Any river but the Colorado, they might have a chance. Water management in the Colorado River is mind-bogglingly bad. Every drop that starts down the river is appropriated four or five times over. Powerful interest groups bury any suggestion to use real science to look at the situation. Any attempt to release additional water would increase silt loading downstream, which qualifies as material damage to downstream users so it can't be done. There are a few sacred cows in the Federal government. Agriculture is the biggest, but utilities are not far behind. Anything that is perceived as damaging agriculture is political suicide in Congress, and attempting to decommission a dam that has been sold for half a century as preventing floods and providing drinking water to cities is doomed to fail. As long as idiots keep wanting to live in the desert and demanding lawns and golf courses, the result will be more dams in the desert, not less. Maybe in a few more generations, when California's "drought" (sounds better than "criminal mismanagement of water", doesn't it?) has continued for a few more decades, someone will actually do something about it. However, since the only approaches that will work involve reclaiming Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Palm Springs, and most of Los Angeles back to uninhabited desert, don't look for it any time soon.
 
The June 24-month forecast for the Colorado River basin is out and it ain’t pretty.


Powell is down over 48’ from this time last year, and the most probable forecast is that it will drop another 45’ in the next 10 months. That would put it just 25’ above its minimum power pool elevation of 3,490’ in April 2022. Another drier than average winter and the loss of power production is no longer hypothetical.

 
i haven’t been on the lake yet this year. As low as it was last year it was still a great week. Fishing was great as always. There were more beaches to camp on at that level, and with dangling rope closed, I had the mid-lake and San Juan arm to myself.

If the dam wasn’t there I wouldn’t support building it now. Since it’s here I’m going to enjoy it.
 
The June 24-month forecast for the Colorado River basin is out and it ain’t pretty.


Powell is down over 48’ from this time last year, and the most probable forecast is that it will drop another 45’ in the next 10 months. That would put it just 25’ above its minimum power pool elevation of 3,490’ in April 2022. Another drier than average winter and the loss of power production is no longer hypothetical.

Thanks for rejoining us. When I hear rumors of your demise I reply "Hayduke lives."

In spite of my bias against Lake Powell as an abominable, short-sighted defacing of an irreplaceable canyon treasure, I found this article comprehensive and informative. It clarifies Lake Powell's untenable status as the division between the upper and lower Colorado river system. What little water there is in that system comes from above it, and nearly all the human demand for it is below it. How valuable can AZ real estate be when it all dries up to desert status again? Will people switch from toilets to litter boxes?
 
You guys like to discuss dams. Think there's any chance they'll ever decommission the dam creating this 180-mile sewage lagoon?

Rethinking the Colorado
Glen Canyon Dam idea worth discussion
By Peter Lavigne


Since he was a boy in the 1960s, gazing at an exquisite but soon-to-be-flooded canyon, Richard Ingebretsen thought about restoring Glen Canyon - along with the Grand Canyon's beaches and riparian ecosystems - by eliminating the reservoir behind the Bureau of Reclamation's controversial Glen Canyon Dam.

Ingebretsen wasn't alone. Writer Edward Abbey called Glen Canyon the heart of the Southwest, more important even than Grand Canyon. The burial of this unique world wonder was controversial from the start of the dam project in the 1950s.

Today, in a era of dramatic water-cycle fluctuations and proposed changes in the uses of the Colorado River watershed, it is useful to examine how one of the West's most controversial dams has evolved.

The dam straddles the Arizona-Utah border, backing up the Colorado River to form Lake Powell.

In the years since filling the dam's reservoir, which commenced in 1963, David Brower's book about Glen Canyon, "The Place No One Knew," Abbey's writings and speeches about the travesty of the dam, and Katie Lee's photographs, stories and songs of the canyons kept alive visions of Glen Canyon that most people assumed were irretrievably lost.

Not so for Ingebretsen. His boyhood memory of the magical place stayed with him, and the loss it represented to humanity stayed as well.

In 1995, Ingebretsen, a medical doctor and physics professor at the University of Utah, decided to do something about the destruction of the canyon he loved as a child. He founded the Glen Canyon Institute and started calling similar-minded people to join the cause. Among them were Dave Wegner, then head of the Bureau of Reclamation's Glen Canyon Ecosystem Studies Unit; David Brower, a world-renowned conservationist who always regretted his failure to stop the completion of Glen Canyon Dam when he was executive director of the Sierra Club in the '60s; and Lee, an actress, singer-songwriter and author with a passion for the Glen Canyon that was gone.

Helped by many key Colorado River figures - including former Clinton administration Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Dan Beard - the institute decided to advocate "decommissioning of the dam" so it could operate with "run-of-the- river" flows. The idea is simple: Liberate the stunningly beautiful series of deep canyons from the weight of the 180-mile-long ringed reservoir that is Lake Powell by letting the river run unimpeded through new diversion tunnels at the base of the dam. In a run-of-the-river operation, the reservoir is no more, a free-flowing river is restored through Glen Canyon and its dozens of unique side canyons come back to use by tributary streams and wildlife, as well as human explorers.

In addition, the Rainbow Bridge National Monument would no longer be flooded by the slackwater pool of the reservoir; badly needed natural river flows would be restored to Grand Canyon beaches, and with them the fish and wildlife depleted by the continually varying flows from the Glen Canyon Dam; and upwards of 1 million acre feet of water wasted annually by evaporation and seepage from this giant pool in the desert could be freed for downstream uses. As a bonus, in high flood years like 1983, when a dangerously full reservoir came within inches of topping and washing out the dam, the new diversion tunnels could be temporarily restricted for flood-control purposes.

Stung by the failure of appeals to beauty and preservation in the early 1960s and the corresponding lack of any environmental impact-assessment process in those pre-environmental-law days, the Glen Canyon Institute in 1996 began a citizen's environmental assessment of the dam, the reservoir and operational effects on the Grand Canyon. Eight separate studies over the next few years firmly grounded the movement in its battle to change the operations of the dam - in science, law and logic.

Public and political reaction to early proposals by the institute to decommission the dam was immediate and blunt: "Crazy," "it will never happen," "insane" and "pipe dream," opponents said. Yet the ideas attracted a small but significant segment of popular support. Gatherings in Salt Lake City and other cities throughout the Southwest to talk about the dam started attracting hundreds of people, and soon more than 1,000.

Threatened by the excitement the institute was generating, politicians convened a carefully scripted congressional hearing on Glen Canyon Dam in 1997 to denounce the idea of draining the reservoir. In following years, they supported legislation forbidding the Department of Interior from spending any money to study decommissioning the dam.

As support for changes in the Glen Canyon Dam operation grew, clarity of purpose became paramount for the institute. Many members of the public, and even members of the institute, never quite understood what "decommissioning" meant, and most assumed the group was advocating the removal of Glen Canyon Dam. In reality, that option just didn't make sense, for financial and many other reasons.

"Originally, we wanted to simply reopen the old diversion tunnels made when the dam was built," said Pam Hyde, a Flagstaff attorney and the first executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. "Rich was having dinner one night in 1997 with Floyd Dominy, the head of the Bureau of Reclamation when Glen Canyon Dam was built, and he mentioned this possibility to Floyd. Floyd told Rich, 'That's crazy. We filled those tunnels with concrete and rebar and they'll take forever to drill out. Here's how to do it.'"

"It was one of those moments," Ingebretsen now says. "Neither one of us had anything to write on, so Floyd grabbed a napkin, and sketched out the place to drill new diversion tunnels through the soft Navajo sandstone. I kept the napkin and now have it framed in my office."

Ten years later, the conversations around the future of Glen Canyon and the Colorado River have changed dramatically. The Glen Canyon Institute and other groups are now advocating for establishment of a Glen Canyon National Park. Others support restoration of Glen Canyon and the Colorado River. An international coalition is making headway on restoration of the Colorado River Delta in Mexico, and several indigenous organizations are actively working on water supply, energy and environmental justice issues.

Even the Bureau of Reclamation stated last summer that it was highly unlikely that Lake Powell would ever refill. As Ingebretsen says, "With 6 million new people in California, and with all the water in the upper basin that they are going to use, Lake Powell is not going to be there. They can only fill it with surplus water - and there isn't any surplus water."

Ingebretsen believes the Glen Canyon Institute's biggest accomplishment of the last decade was "getting the debate going."

"Honestly, before, there was no other side to it. No one ever talked about it. Now, there's a voice out there that there are problems, that there is a better way."

Ingebretsen calls the decision to base the institute's effort in science and law, something originally proposed by Dave Wegner, "absolutely critical. It was essential; it gave us credibility and science to study and debate." The data the group presented 10 years ago about demand and water losses "is now accepted as fact," Ingebretsen says. "We were dismissed at first. & People who called us crazy 10 years ago are now calling and saying, 'You know, you were right.'"

The future of Western water is ultimately about choices, and the current fight about the proposed new pipeline to bring water from Lake Powell to St. George, Utah, is a great example, Ingebretsen says. "This is a debate that has gone on since time immemorial: What do we do with our lands? What is the best use of our lands? Where do we develop? Where do we not?" says Ingebretsen. "Someone has got to stand up constantly and say, 'We have to think through this, we've got to think of our kids, we've got to think of the communities of the future and do we want to do this?'"

It's probably safe to say that the Glen Canyon Institute will remain a small, relatively unknown think tank. It is also safe to say the institute has permanently changed the conversation about water on the Colorado River - and that it will continue to influence the life and future of the river and its watershed for many years to come.

Peter Lavigne is founder of the Rivers Foundation of the Americas; director of the Colorado Water Workshop; and professor of environmental studies at Western State College in Gunnison, Colo.
Glen Canyon is here to stay,way too much money involved with the lake.
 
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