Falling Reservoir Reveals Buried Treasure Of Glen Canyon - NYT

[hatrack]

ESCALANTE, Utah - "In the early 1960's, the nation's environmental movement cut its baby teeth on a fierce battle to stop construction of dams along the Colorado River. Two proposed dams were never built, but Glen Canyon dam, located in an unprotected area, was completed in 1963. Over the next 17 years, water backed up for 186 miles, forming Lake Powell and inundating Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of side canyons.

The defeat was deeply felt. David Brower, who was executive director of the Sierra Club, called the death of Glen Canyon the greatest disappointment of his life. Edward Abbey, the mischievous author and defender of the natural world, called Glen Canyon the "living heart" of the Colorado River and Lake Powell a "blue death." He often spoke of floating a houseboat filled with explosives to the base of the dam to get rid of "Lake Foul." What Mr. Abbey and the Sierra Club couldn't or didn't do nature has now accomplished. A severe Western drought - some say the worst in 500 years - is shrinking Lake Powell at the rate of up to a foot every four days (Ed. - This is not accurate - as of this writing reservoir levels have stabilized at about 3570, but will begin to fall slowly again in early spring). Since 1999, the vast reservoir has lost more than 60 percent of its water.

Glen Canyon is returning. It is open and viewable in much of its former glory. At the confluence of Coyote Creek and Escalante River, where boaters once motored by to see famous rock formations, backpackers now pick their way up a shallow river channel. Fifteen-foot high cottonwoods grow amid thickets of willow, gamble oak and tamarisk. Where fish thrived, mountain lions prowl.

The change may be permanent. "Short of several back-to-back years with 100-year runoff, Lake Powell will never be full again," said Dr. Tom Myers, a hydrologic consultant in Reno, Nev. Downstream users now consume 16.5 million acre-feet of water, but on average only 15 million acre-feet flow into the system each year, he said. Add more than a million acre-feet of water lost to evaporation and it is obvious that only during relatively wet years is it possible to add water."

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/science/earth/02cany.html

Long, interesting article.

[vademocrat]

1. Thank you for posting this - I've always regretted

not being able to see Glen Canyon the way Edward Abbey saw it...

Sounds like a worthwhile trip!

[htuttle]

2. Maybe we don't need that 'one precision earthquake' after all?

Or maybe it can happen somewhere else...

[phantom power]

3. "short of several back-to-back years with 100-year runoff..."

"Powell reservoir will never be full again.

Wow. That really puts our water-budget situation in perspective.

I mean, damn... That will really make a person pause and think.

[hatrack]

4. Yeah, it's at only 38% of capacity now

And because of forty years' worth of siltation, total actual capacity now is about 24 MAF - it was 27 MAF when the diversion gates first closed back in 1963.

So in addition to being more than 60% empty now, the entire system has already permanently lost more than 10% of capacity to siltation in barely 40 years.

[phantom power]

5. As I recall, the silt level is predicted to reach the height of the

release-gates in about 100 years. At which point, if the silt clogged or otherwise damaged the gates, it would not only render the dam useless, but profoundly dangerous. A very large, moist, time-bomb.

[NNadir]

6. As in...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/29/dam.removal.ap/

[phantom power]

8. Why, yes. Except, three or four orders of magnitude larger...

[NickB79]

7. Too bad about all that tamarisk

Even if Glen Canyon comes back from the depths of Lake Powell, if they don't control the tamarisk it will crowd out all the native vegetation permanently. Compared to it's original state, it will still be devoid of much diversity for wildlife to use.