Posted on 11/05/2021 1:37:40 PM PDT by AFreeBird
The date is Feb. 9, 1997, and the man responsible for one of the most egregious environmental follies in human history is sitting at a restaurant in Boyce, Virginia, with the leader of the movement seeking to undo his mistake. Of the hundreds of dams Floyd Dominy green lit during his decade running the Bureau of Reclamation, none are as loathed as his crown jewel, the Glen Canyon Dam. In 1963, Dominy erected the 710-foot (216-meter) tall monument to himself out of ego and concrete, deadening the Colorado River just upstream of the Grand Canyon, drowning more than 250 square miles (648 square kilometers) in the heart of the Colorado Plateau, and inventing Lake Powell in the middle of a sun-baked desert.
After a couple of drinks, Dominy asked his dinner guest, Glen Canyon Institute founder Richard Ingebretsen, for an appraisal of the effort to drain Lake Powell. “It’s pretty serious, Mr. Dominy,” Ingebretsen recalled telling him, holding back the seething discontent of the broad coalition he represented. When Ingebretsen described his hypothetical plan to drill through the twin boreholes bestriding Glen Canyon dam, Dominy replied, “Well, you can’t do that. It is 300 feet of reinforced concrete.” Then Dominy did something extraordinary—he lowered his glasses, pulled out a pen, and diagrammed precisely how he would do it on a cocktail napkin. A stunned Ingebretsen could hardly believe what was happening.
“This has never been done before,” Dominy said. “But I have been thinking about it, and it will work.”
Nearly 25 years later, the campaign to bypass Glen Canyon Dam has never been stronger. Now may seem like an odd time to make the case for draining the second-largest reservoir in the country, with the West in the depths of a megadrought unmatched since the Medieval Period. Tree ring cores and remote sensing data indicate a paucity of soil moisture unseen in at least 1,200 years. Lake Powell itself, along with reservoirs across the West, are at record lows, and climate change is set to exact an even more severe toll with rising temperatures killing the snowpack that feeds them, evaporating what are essentially ponds in the middle of the desert. Yet it is the drought itself that has revealed precisely why now is the moment to execute Dominy’s plan to bypass his dam, lower Lake Powell to river level, and restore Glen Canyon….
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Another way to look at it - two reservoirs provide more storage capacity than just one. And storage capacity can be important, in terms of maximizing the benefits of wet years, and moderating the negative impacts of dry years.
If the water in Lake Powell isn't going where it's needed, a sensible approach might be to negotiate for the water rights, rather than trying to destroy half the existing storage capacity...
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Without those two dams you can just close So. Nevada, So. California, New Mexico, Arizona, and the millions of acres of agriculture that go along with it. If you want to starve in the dark in the south west removing those dams would be a good way to do it.
Love the cartoon. During my college days in Tucson in the 1970’s I read a lot of Ed Abbey’s books. To this day, his Desert Solitaire remains in my memory and enhanced my love of the desert and the canyon lands of southern Utah.
I hiked the slot canyons and climbed down slickrock outcrops with a hiking group out of Tucson and shared slideshows with them once a month. The highlight was rafting in the Grand Canyon before permits became almost impossible to obtain for private groups. However it was too late to enjoy the splendor of the now submerged Glen Canyon area.
We need more dams.
An interesting read, but nature exists for us to use.
That said, if we could starve metro California areas in favor of helping farms, I’d be on board for that.
Drain the swamp first. The ROI would be significantly greater.
Yes, so the question remains not a good idea with the democrat push for electric vehicles.
Unicorn farts
Yup.
Total agreement here.
Rented a house boat on Powell for a week about 20 years ago. Each night we would anchor in scenery totally different from the night before.
The best part was sleeping every night under the starlit desert sky. Amazing on steroids!
maybe homes could run on teslas
If they really want to break the damn, put Biden/Harris in charge of maintaining it.
Presumably, the economic impact of this would be considered; there are tourists from around the world who visit that area.
I thought this was going to be an anti-Federal Reserve screed.
Here’s what a lot of people don’t know about the Colorado. It is diverted three times to the east side of the continental divide. Once from grand lake, once through the Mofat Tunnel. And once from lake Dillon.
All three diversions end up in reservoirs in and around Denver and eventually the platte river basin which feeds the Missouri River and ends up in the gulf. Perhaps more water would be in the west if Denver and the high plains didn’t take water from the opposite side of the continental divide.
Actually, the mayor said he was seeing an uptick in nature tourism because the lowered water levels have brought back native flora and fauna. And Page is not a large town and their water needs can be be presumably met directly by the Colorado river. 🤷🏻♂️
Did not know that.
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