Ecologists Push to Drain Arizona’s Lake Powell, Restore Glen Canyon

PHOENIX —  Scientists predict that Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest artificial reservoir, will be around for some 700 years.

But among folks in Page, Ariz., and other small border communities whose economic lifeblood is sustained by the 186-mile-long lake, there’s a growing fear the lake’s end could come much sooner.

At first, opponents dismissed the call to drain Lake Powell as a preposterous environmental pipe dream. Now, the effort to restore the drowned Glen Canyon is gaining momentum--albeit slowly.

“This is one of those things that if you just sit back, it can happen. Absolutely,” said Joan Nevills-Stavely, executive director of the Page Chamber of Commerce. “If the lake goes, it would be the end of Page. But the ramifications are greater than Page.”

The Salt Lake City-based Glen Canyon Institute, whose leadership includes the Sierra Club’s famed leader, David Brower, is leading the charge to pull the plug on the lake. Lake Powell was created 36 years ago when Glen Canyon Dam began holding back the Colorado River.

“My goal in the next several years is to get the questions posed and questions answered,” said Dave Wegner, who quit working for Glen Canyon Dam to become the institute’s chief scientist.

The institute is looking for a full-time executive director to fund-raise and lobby the issue. And in the meantime, the institute is gathering technical studies on sediment, water storage, economics and dam safety.

When all the information is collected and studied, the group plans to submit a report to Congress--which would ultimately decide the lake’s fate.

“We want to make sure that when we take this issue to the public, it’s based on solid information,” Wegner said.

The report, which will take several years to complete, will show that draining Lake Powell is the next logical step to better manage the Grand Canyon downstream from the lake in its natural state and to restore the now-submerged Glen Canyon, Wegner said.

The assessment will consider the impact of draining the lake on plants, wildlife and ground water, among other issues. It will also evaluate economic and social effects on the region and local communities, he said.

Supporters of the drainage plan contend that the lake along the Arizona-Utah line will eventually fill with silt and become polluted by recreational boaters.

They also fear Glen Canyon Dam may become unstable. Heavy runoff in 1983 nearly burst the dam.

“When we drain Lake Powell, we’ll be much better off,” Brower said. “I believe it’s a major disaster waiting to happen.”

Brower and other drain-the-lake backers admit their dream--if it comes true--won’t be realized for several generations. It would take decades of study, education and arm twisting in Washington to dismantle one of the largest water storage facilities in the West, an electricity source for a half-million homes, and a blue-green oasis for scores of campers and boaters.

In recent years, however, the idea that dams do more harm than good has become the federal government’s prevailing thinking. The Bureau of Reclamation, which oversaw a dam-building frenzy, no longer constructs them. And last year, the government began removing six small dams in the West.

In a speech last summer to the Ecological Society of America, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the removal of those dams “ring[s] in an entirely new era of conservation history, moving beyond preservation or protection, toward a deeper, more complex movement, the affirmative act of restoration.”

Babbitt opposes draining Lake Powell, but acknowledges the dam has caused ecological problems, especially for native fish and riparian habitats downstream in the Grand Canyon.

Officials in Page and Utah communities say they’ll never allow the lake to be drained. During a congressional hearing in summer 1997, opponents gathered to ridicule the idea.

Critics say draining the lake would undo decades of contracts, treaties and court rulings that consider the lake water an integral piece of an elaborate scheme to divide the Colorado River among seven states.

Reclamation officials say the lake allows farmers and cities to use water without fear in drought years. Cranking out more than 75% of the power produced on the upper Colorado River, Glen Canyon is also a cash machine. The money made from selling its power funds most irrigation projects in the region.

Some of the biggest opposition comes from members of the area’s recreation industry who rent boats and run rafting trips through the Grand Canyon. Overall, tourism generates some $500 million a year.