Glen Canyon Dam

Before we left Sedona, we toyed with a variety of routes to get us to southwestern Utah, all taking us past spectacular natural features. In the essence of time and practicality we opted to skip the remainder of the sites in northern Arizona (Canyon de Chelly, Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, etc) and head north towards Page, Arizona. The only thing we knew about Page was that author Edward Abbey talked a lot about it, mostly because it is the site of the Glen Canyon Dam. For environmentalists and other activists this dam is the essence of what went wrong in the American West.

Glen Canyon Dam

Water has always been a limiting factor in the West so when the Glen Canyon Dam and the resulting Lake Powell were first proposed many saw it as a logical way to populate the western states. Today the Colorado River provides drinking water to 27 million people in seven western states (AZ, CA, CO, NV, NM, UT, WY). It also provides irrigation to 3.5 million acres within the Colorado Basin and hundreds of thousands of acres farther away. These states are divided into two basins, the northern and the southern. The northern states loose all rights to the water that passes south of the nearby town of Lee’s Ferry. Lake Powell solved that problem by stockpiling water for use during low flow months (ironically those same months are when the majority of the water is used for farming, etc).

This seems like the dam provided progress (I italicized it since dave has been working on a blog entitled progress and what it really means for the planet and those of us living on it. Stay tuned for that soon.). Unfortunately when man starts messing with Mother Nature’s systems it almost never works out for the better. Glen Canyon is a great example. It is experiencing the same prolonged drought and evaporation issues as the Hoover Dam. Not to mention that Lake Powell submerged countless side canyons, Indian ruins and who knows what other marvels of nature. But more importantly the reservoir allowed more and more people to live in an arid environment that was never meant to sustain such a large population. As a result we now have cities, big cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, consuming water at a rate unparalleled to what the Colorado River is able to support. And the people in these cities, like most other places in the US, are not conscience of how much water they use on a day to day basis.

1983 vs. 2004 Boat Ramp

1983 vs. 2004 Rainbow Bridge

1983 vs. 2004 Marina

Living in a van and not being able to carry much water has exaggerated how much dave and I focus on water. We are always aware of how much we use to do dishes, brush our teeth or drink. (Both of us can take a hot shower with four gallons of water. Thanks to the great solar shower our friend Kari got us!) If the western US doesn’t wake up to their thirsty habitats soon the next war we are engaged in could very possibly be state versus state for water!

If you want to check how much water you use on a daily basis, try filling up a couple of five gallon containers. See if you can shower, brush your teeth, prepare your meals and clean up afterwards without filling it up. Then take a look at how much water you are using for other things like washing your vehicle or watering your lawn. When water starts to become the precious resource it truly is, how will your priorities change to reflect it? Is a green lawn or an everyday shower still a priority?

Edward Abbey talks about the Glen Canyon Dam so much because he would have liked nothing more than to have seen it blown up. In fact a few of his books (Monkey Wrench Gang and Hayduke Lives) are closely tied to this idea. Environmentalists to this day still talk about his books and the beauty of seeing the Colorado River flow in its natural state, unconfined by this and other huge walls of cement. Soon after we left Page we came across a great article entitled “Restoring Glen Canyon - Reality or Fantasy”. It was an enlightening article as well as a sad state of facts. The author stated three main difficulties in restoring the canyon:

The first problem is the law itself. Water rights for the Colorado River are divided up by the Colorado River Compact. It is a treaty negotiated by the states in the Colorado River basin, ratified by Congress and signed by the president. Trying to renegotiate the treaty terms would be incredibly challenging since most of the rampant development in the west is tied to this water. If states loose control over how much they are allocated most of these cities wouldn’t be able to continue to grow let alone continue to provide for the residents already there. We all know that development is normally associated with big money and big money has a lot of pull in this country.

The second problem is how to get the water out of Lake Powell. The dam doesn’t release water from the very bottom. Instead the water goes through a penstock 550 feet above the dam’s base and is then sent through the turbines and finally released. Draining the lake this way would leave hundreds of millions of gallons in the lake. To make matters worse the diversion tunnels originally built have been filled in with concrete to reinforce the structure. It would take a lot of chiseling to break up that much concrete.

The third problem would be the end result if problems one and two were solved. Lake Powell has been building up massive amounts of silt. Silt that would normally flow downstream if the river were functioning properly. Once this silt is exposed to the air it would harden and could potentially cause the river to be unable to find its natural course. These mud flats or silt deposits are also prime areas for the invasive salt cedar to take over. This incredibly obnoxious, destructive and hardy plant would easily out compete native vegetation and would eventually clog every side canyon and gravel bar along the rivers new course.

So it doesn’t look promising for us to ever see the Glen Canyon and Colorado River functioning as they should. Yaa progress!