Glen Canyon Dam isn’t coming down. That’s
the final word from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on calls to
dismantle the dam, drain Lake Powell and release the waters of the
Colorado (HCN, 12/22/03: Being green in the land of the saints).
Under orders from Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the
agency must develop a drought-management plan for Lake Powell and
Lake Mead by December 2007. At a public meeting in Salt Lake City
in July, the Moab-based nonprofit Living Rivers proposed
decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam and using Lake Mead, downstream
from Powell, as the river’s principal storage facility.
Additional water could then be stored underground in aquifers,
rather than in Powell, which loses about 1 million acre-feet of
water per year to evaporation and seepage.
But at the
meeting, Randy Peterson, the Bureau’s regional manager for
environmental resources, said the agency will not consider any such
proposals. “The reality is, the secretary told us to consider how
these two reservoirs should be operated in times of shortage,” says
Barry Wirth, the Bureau’s Upper Region public affairs
officer. “We have no legal authority to eliminate one of them.”
That would require an act of Congress, says Wirth, “and
Congress has gone the other way in recent years —
they’re not going to consider proposals (to tear down dams).”
But John Weisheit, conservation director of Living
Rivers, says keeping water in aboveground reservoirs is
inefficient. “If the purpose of the study is to save water, the
Bureau is not going about it according to what science has to say.”
The Bureau is currently analyzing management
alternatives, and will hold more public meetings later this year.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Glen Canyon Dam will stand.
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