The Impending Demise of the Colorado River

As most people in the Western United States know, we are experiencing an extended drought. The aridness in the West has resulted in a severely diminished flow of water along the Colorado River. In fact, the river no longer discharges into the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. From that now dormant coastal estuary, most wildlife disappeared long ago. In 2022, with the advent of a limited pilot-program, a tiny amount of Colorado River water will flow again to the sea.

That is a hopeful sign during an otherwise bleak hydrological environment in the West. Ironically, humankind’s misplaced desire to control that once mighty river could result in a destructive wave traveling from Glen Canyon Dam all the way to the Sea of Cortez. Stay with me to the end of this article to learn how such an apocalyptic fate for the iconic river is possible.

Why is the Colorado River failing? Historical and updated river-flow data allows us to predict its demise. There is no longer an “if.” Now it is all about “when.” As less rain falls and the snowpack diminishes in the Upper Colorado River Basin, another phenomenon takes hold. For some it consists of blind ignorance. For many, it is the irrational human need to utilize and be wasteful of water. Either scenario raises demand for water, as if it emanates from an unlimited source.

One tankless water heater manufacturer promotes “endless hot water, which is now available” with their system. A nearby neighbor in Southern California defies current “one-day-each-week” outdoor watering limits. He runs his lawn sprinklers daily, often before sunrise to avoid detection, then follows up by hand-watering his entire front yard. Each day, almost ten gallons of potable water flows down the gutter past our house. Our front lawn is dead. His lawn is lush, green, and currently going to seed. In Southern California and now throughout the Southwest, a green lawn is the sure sign of a scofflaw. The attitude of many people throughout the Southwest, is one of entitlement. For them, cheating on their water budget or ignoring their legal limits is a way of life.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the drought now brings Lake Powell to its lowest elevation since initial filling in the 1960s. How low is it? In April 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which operates the major dams throughout the Colorado River system made a surprise announcement. From Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Wyoming’s largest, they released 500,000-acre-feet of water. From there, the water flowed down the Green River, and then into the Colorado River. The plan was to replenish and stabilize the water level in Lake Powell.

The USBR has touted this plan as a prudent way to keep power flowing from the hydroelectric turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, at least through 2023. Ironically, the original public proposal for the Glen Canyon Dam, promoted it as a “flood control dam,” not as a lynchpin in the electrical grid. Because the reservoir was beautiful and grand when at least half full, Lake Powell also became an indispensable recreational resource. Few people realized that the reservoir rested on soft and porous sandstone. In addition to relentless evaporation, the reservoir “banks” about fifteen percent of its water volume each year.

For almost fifty years, the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) operated near the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona. Utilizing coal mined at Black Mesa, Arizona, its furnaces polluted the air, and its pumps withdrew vast quantities of water from Lake Powell. While wasting over ten percent of its power conveying its own cooling water and coal supply, NGS also broke records for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution. Although there was onsite wastewater recycling, losses due to both steam turbine generation and cooling tower evaporation made the NGS the largest single user of water in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

The main purpose of the NGS was to annually pump 50,000 acre-feet of “excess” Colorado River water over four mountain ranges to both Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Along the way, Arizona diverted vast amounts of water into shallow desert aquifers near the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The idea was to later mine that water from the desert and supply it to Phoenix. Currently, a large aqueduct is under construction there. Since the scheme has no precedent, no one knows if or for how long this desert water mining will work.

Despite the excessive air, water and ground pollution associated with the NGS, for decades it was like the monster that would not die. Not until the vast over development of natural gas resources in the Four Corners Region did the NGS's economic costs outweigh its job-related or power production benefits. In 2019, twenty years into a regional drought of millennial proportions, the NGS finally shutdown. If we are looking for a culprit in the current desiccated condition of Lake Powell, the NGS would be a prime target for investigation. In fact, the same flawed arguments that allowed the construction of Glen Canyon Dam go hand in hand with the commissioning of the NGS in the mid-1970s.

In 2022, all of us who now rely on the Colorado River have both an environmental and an economic bill to pay. How long can we collectively afford to subsidize lush green golf courses in Page, Arizona, alfalfa fields in the Imperial County, California, cotton growing in Pima County, Arizona, or my neighbor’s green lawn? More importantly, do humans have the capacity to create and implement a plan that will save the Colorado River system? Taking shorter showers, eliminating public fountains and decorative turf will not be enough to turn that tide.

What we need now is a clear-eyed look at the entire Colorado Riverway, from the high mountains to the low desert and everywhere in between. Affected states still adhere to the outdated Colorado River Compact of 1922. A century ago, all the states touching the Colorado River watershed agreed to over allocate its resources for generations to come. Politics played its role, with water rights assigned according to historical usage and population density. As a result, the compact granted the irrigation district in Imperial County, California (population 180,000), the largest single claim on Colorado River water. Why? Because long before huge dams and hydroelectric power allowed for the long-distance pumping of river water, inventive farmers directly tapped the river. In fact, a Colorado River dike which broke early in the 20th century resulted in the forming of the Salton Sea. Near Blythe, California resourceful farming families have succeeded in transforming the desert into cropland.

The Colorado River Compact expires in 2026. Often acrimonious discussions regarding its replacement are already underway. The participants include the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada), Mexico and several tribal nations. According to a 2019 federal Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), as Lake Mead falls below 1,045’ elevation, the USBR must now declare a “Stage 2b Water Shortage Emergency”. On August 8, 2022, the reservoir stood at 1,229’ elevation, only four feet above a DCP Stage 3 declaration.

As a temporary measure, Congress recently approved $4 billion for emergency drought mitigation within the Colorado River Basin. Much of that money will go to pay Indian tribes and alfalfa growers in the Imperial Valley not to plant crops. The various USBR shortage decrees have flown by so quickly, it is hard for even the experts to keep track of water allocations. As of August 16, 2022, a Department of Interior declaration cut 2023 water allocations to Arizona by 21%, with smaller cuts to Nevada and Mexico. Senior water rights in California assured that there would be no cuts to its water deliveries in 2023.

In a surprise move, the Department of the Interior also allowed the acrimonious and unfruitful negotiations among the signatories to the “Law of the River” to proceed. It is an election year, and no one wanted to restrict anyone’s water rights further than already agreed upon. While Nero fiddled, Rome burned. While recalcitrant negotiators wrangle over cutting the allocations of others, but increasing their own, the Colorado River is not participating in the discussions.

Protracted negotiations or litigation will extend any true solution until it is too late to save hydroelectric production at both Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams. Achieving the “dead pool” elevation of 3,370’ at Lake Powell and 895’ at Lake Mead, when water can no longer pass through either dam, becomes more likely over time. Prior to dead pool, there will be too little water in the reservoirs to send down the penstocks and spin the electrical turbines. The USBR interim plan to “balance the two pools” will delay the inevitable, but not change the outcome.

In 2022 and 2023, a physical danger lurks in the “minimum power pool,” coming soon to Lake Powell. With typical 20th century hubris, the designers of Glen Canyon Dam did not anticipate a future time when its hydroelectric plant would go offline. As of September 6, 2022, Lake Powell was at an elevation of 3,523’, or almost seventy-eight feet lower than two years prior. The lake’s elevation rests just thirty-three feet above minimum power pool. At minimum power pool, there will not be sufficient "head" for gravity to send water down the penstocks and spin the turbines.

Unless weather patterns and water usage change drastically, that critical level will come sometime in 2023. Below minimum power pool, the reservoir will still have millions of acre-feet of sequestered water. What it will lack is a safe method of releasing any of that water through the dam. To fully grasp this eventuality, picture the Grand Canyon becoming a permanent dry wash. Still, a potentially unsafe method of water release from Glen Canyon Dam does exist. It involves what are known as “diversion tunnels” or the “outlet works.”

To facilitate construction of the dam in the 1950s, engineers first bored two enormous tunnels through the canyon walls. They then constructed a coffer dam, which temporarily diverted river water through the new diversion tunnels. The resulting outlet works could divert and convey even a large spring flood safely downstream. Luckily, no major floods occurred until after the 1964 commissioning of Glen Canyon Dam. Upon completion, crews dismantled the coffer dam, and closed the enormous gates at the head of the diversion tunnels.

All went well until the spring of 1983. In anticipation of summer electrical generation needs, the USBR kept Lake Powell at an elevated level. As spring wore on, there were huge snowstorms in the Upper Basin watershed, followed by rainstorms and rapid snow melt. Quickly, water in Lake Powell reached the top of the dam. Only hastily constructed plywood and lumber bulwarks atop the dam kept it from a disastrous overtopping. Unable to divert sufficient water through the hydroelectric plant, the operators “opened the floodgates,” better known as the outlet works.

For weeks, enormous outflows subjected the unlined sandstone tunnels to unanticipated stress. As a result, the outflow ejected huge chunks of raw sandstone downstream of the dam. Contemporary reports by persons not authorized to speak publicly told of the dam humming or thrumming, as if in major distress. Soon thereafter, the water level of Lake Powell dropped far enough to allow closure of the outlet works and resumption of water release solely through the hydroelectric station. Chastened, the dam’s operators never again let the lake rise even close to capacity prior to the end of spring runoff. Ironically, this conservative approach to reservoir management meant that Lake Powell would never again approach “full pool.”

The 2022 emergency release of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir has bought the USBR one more year before the prospect of a minimum power pool at Lake Powell. In their version of Two Card Monte, dam operators are accepting 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge and reducing deliveries downstream to Lake Mead by a similar amount. As Oz famously said in the Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Likewise, should we pay no attention to the huge amount of water retained in Lake Powell?

If you were to write a disaster movie script, you would include a scene in which veteran Glen Canyon Dam workers face the prospect of reopening the compromised outlet works. In releasing any remaining water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, they fear the cracking and ultimate destruction of Glen Canyon Dam. In the next scene, they would open the creaking gates of the outlet works. For a time, everything would work correctly. Then, they would hear a low harmonic sound emanating from the dam. Soon, the humming would become a roar. Too late to save themselves, the workers would run for the exits, only to have the dam disintegrate around them.

The result would be the immediate draining of the second largest reservoir in America. Almost immediately, the biggest flood on the Colorado River since the creation of the Grand Canyon would ensue. At Lake Mead, downstream, the wave would surge to a height greater than any tsunami in history. As the surge created by the wave would impinge on Hoover Dam, that too would disintegrate. Farther downstream, the remaining dams would fall one after another. Within hours, the once sequestered contents of the Colorado River would rush into the Sea of Cortez, creating a saltwater tsunami.

Such a catastrophe cannot happen, you say. In 1983, the dam almost failed. There is nothing to say that our next attempt to save the Colorado River will not result in its untimely demise. Thousands of years hence, descendants of survivors in the Southwest might tell tales of a Great Flood, from which their ancestors survived. Other than not including an ark full of animals, that story has a familiar ring.

Email James McGillis

From a Flat Tire in Kanab to The Stratosphere in Las Vegas - 2021

 

From a Flat Tire in Kanab to The Stratosphere in Las Vegas

After an uneventful trip from Page, Arizona to Kanab, Utah, I set up camp at the venerable Kanab RV Corral. By booking early, I was able to enjoy the bucolic charm of old Kanab. Since I first stayed at the RV Corral in 2006, tourist facilities in the City of Kanab have expanded exponentially. New hotels and RV Parks seem to sprout up every year. Even so, the population of Kanab now stands at only 4,636.

To the east of the city, the Grand Plateau RV Resort features eighty RV spaces and fifteen cabins. Nearby, Red Canyon Cabins features approximately fifty-five individual cabins, which wrap around the Kanab Quality Inn. Upon my arrival at the Kanab RV Corral, I learned that there was not a single unreserved RV space in Kanab that night. Not ironically, the Kanab Creek aquifer draws on the same watershed that feed the Colorado River and Lake Mead downstream. As the eastern gateway to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, Kanab now appears dominated by developers and hoteliers. Each new facility uses untold amounts of water.

While in Kanab, I visited the historic Parry Lodge, first built as a private home in 1892. In 1930, the Parry brothers, converted the large property into a Hollywood movie support destination, complete with motel and luxury hotel accommodations. In 2021, with decreased revenue and an increased cost of operation, the property closed during the depths of the health crisis. As of August 2021, the historic lodge is again open for business.

Although tourists could not enter during my visit, I could peer down the driveway and see “Randolph Scott’s Room”, which was the first door along an otherwise deserted driveway. John Wayne’s room was farther down the driveway. Out front, there were memorial plaques honoring various Western movie heroes of the 20th century, including Ronald Reagan and Joel McCrea. On August 14, 2003, the complex became a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. While I was strolling the grounds, a woman told me about a nearby historical movie site.

Intrigued, I drove up along Kanab Creek to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Remembering it as a small outpost of animal care in 2006, I was amazed to see a huge ranch and campus designed to care for everything from horses to raptors. Since I did not have a tour reservation, I stuck to the dirt road and went up canyon. Near the upper reaches of the facility, I discovered an historical red barn. Other than a new roof, the barn looked just as it did for over a century. During that time, the wooden structure had served as both a horse barn and a Hollywood Western movie location. From the woman in town, I had learned that none other than the late, great George “Gabby” Hayes had filmed there.

On the morning of May 26, I prepared for the 207-mile trip from Kanab to Las Vegas, Nevada. While checking my RV tires, I realized that my left-rear tire was woefully low on pressure. Although I could not see it then, a steel screw had punctured the tread. After a failed attempt to pump up the tire, I decided to roll my rig slowly to the Ramsay Towing & Service Center, just up the highway. There, the nice woman behind the counter said it would be a minimum two hour wait for service. I decided to roll slowly down the back streets of Kanab to the nearby Best Tire and Wheel Shop. There, a tired voice from the back of the shop told me that he had appointments stacked up and more customers expected soon. He suggested that I try Hatch Automotive, just across the highway.

At the rustic Hatch Automotive garage, an older gentleman (Dr. Livingston, I presume) stood inside, wearing a sparkling clean set of clothes. As I waited for him to finish a conversation, I noticed a tire-busting machine in the corner of the garage. It looked like it had last seen service twenty years prior. When the gentleman turned to me, he almost chuckled at my request for assistance. He pointed to the depths of the garage and said that a young man who was up to his elbows in grease was the only person who did any work around there. It was then that I realized that Hatch Automotive was probably a hobby for that retired gentleman. “I guess I’ll just fix it myself”, I said. “That would be a good idea”, the gentleman replied.

From there, I slowly rolled my rig to a wide street behind the nearby La Quinta Inn. I remember what a mobile tire-buster once told me near the Arizona border. "You can do it yourself. Just roll one axle up high enough that the second axle lifts its tire off the ground. Then it is as easy as changing a tire on your car". Utilizing various pieces of lumber that I normally use to level my rig, I managed to pull forward on to my makeshift wooden ramp. With the rear axle suspended in the air, I used my trusty lug wrench to remove the offending wheel. Way back in Needles, on the first day of my trip, I had checked my spare tire for proper inflation. Confident that it could do the job, I rolled my spare tire and rearward and then mounted it on the rear axle. Within twenty minutes, I finished by using my trusty torque wrench to cinch down the lug nuts to a proper level. After rolling off my makeshift lumberyard, I was ready to roll. Soon, the stress of looking for nonexistent tire-service in Kanab disappeared. Happy to be moving again, I looked at my watch. My entire tire escapade in Kanab had taken just over one hour. It felt like instant manifestation all over again.

Across the U.S. there is a shortage of labor, especially in the smaller towns. For the available wages, young people do not want to bust tires or learn automotive repair. If he was paid a fair wage, the 1980's Chevy Dinosaur that the young mechanic was digging into at Hatch Automotive would not be worth the time it took to repair. With a college or a trade school degree, a young person could escape the grease and grime associated with being an underpaid mechanic in Kanab, Utah. A young auto mechanic would be better off taking an unpaid apprenticeship at a Tesla Service Center. At least there is a future in working on electric vehicles. With over 570,000 RVs sold in the past year, there are now tens of thousands more travelers on the road. The lesson I learned on this trip was to depend on myself for minor repairs. If you need a flat tire fixed in Kanab, be prepared to wait most of a day for service. If you need after-hours roadside RV service near Aztec, New Mexico, be prepared for a $500 service call, plus time and one half for any actual repairs. With that, the price to change and fix a flat tire on the road could easily approach $1,000. My new motto is, “Be Prepared. Have a spare.”

From the snow of Southwestern Colorado to the heat of Las Vegas, my arrival in Nevada was a shock. My fifth wheel has a single air conditioning unit aboard. Until arriving in Las Vegas in late May 2021, I never imagined that I might need a second A/C unit. After a relatively cool first night, I spoke with my neighbor at the Las Vegas RV Resort. He was a specialist in industrial plumbing design and installation. He and his wife had recently arrived in Las Vegas from his Florida home. His main task in Las Vegas was to design and oversee the installation of industrial piping at the former Molycorp Mine (Now called the Mountain Pass Mine), south of Primm, Nevada. Mountain Pass Mine is not an historical mine tucked into a romantic mountain pass. It is a strip mine, pure and simple.

When he arrived in Las Vegas, my RV neighbor found inadequate Wi-Fi and scorching desert heat. With plans to spend fourteen months in Las Vegas, he needed quick relief. By the time I departed, two days later, he had shade cloth installed on all his exterior windows and a microwave Wi-Fi disk installed atop his access ladder. With high-speed internet, he could view and revise the water, chemical and steam pipes required to restart one of the few rare-earth mineral mines in the United States. Although the Department of Defense had partnered with the mine’s new owners in 2019, decades of neglect and intermittent closures at the mine had left its infrastructure inoperable. Apparently, it was in worse shape than any highway I had recently driven in the Four Corners Region. In essence, the entire mineral processing system at the mine would require a redesign and replacement.

When I asked how long that would take, he sighed and said, “They think the mine can be operational in twelve to fourteen months”. After a long pause, he said, “I’m not sure I can get enough skilled pipe-fitters to complete that task in the 120-degree heat of the Mojave Desert”. The former owner of the Mountain Pass Mine was Molycorp, which went bankrupt in 2014. The mine had suffered the same fate as many “green energy” technologies, such as solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. For decades, China had undercut U.S. domestic prices and, in this case, had driven the only major rare-earth minerals mine in America out of business.

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense awoke from its slumber and agreed to partially fund the reopening of the Mountain Pass Mine. As we know, if China were to curtail the supply of rare-earth minerals to the U.S., the emerging electrical vehicle (EV) industry would fail almost immediately. The Mountain Pass Mine is located just across the Nevada border, in San Bernardino County, California. As such, every part of the refurbishment project will be subject to review by California state agencies. When he had retrofitted paper mills throughout the Southern U.S., my neighbor told me, the state of jurisdiction would issue one permit for an entire project. California, he said, requires a separate permit for each aspect of design and construction. With California environmental rules and bureaucracy in mind, the reopening of the Mountain Pass Mine in late 2022 sounded like a “pipe dream” to me.

On my layover day in Las Vegas, the air temperature rose to about 105-degrees. On the asphalt pads of the RV Park, the temperature was ten or fifteen degrees higher. The intense heat and my under-powered air conditioner reminded me about a story from Yuma, Arizona. For decades, Yuma was renowned as the hottest city in America. Tired of constantly being the butt of “hot city” jokes, Yuma relocated its official weather station to the center of a well-watered citrus orchard. Almost instantly, Phoenix, Arizona became the hottest city in America, with 169 days each year at 90F degrees or more. As the Colorado River wanes to a trickle, there will be insufficient imported water for cotton farming and cattle ranching in Southern Arizona. Soon after that, we can expect outlawing of the outdoor water-mister systems that make dining or relaxing outdoors in Phoenix possible.

On Friday May 28, I bid my Las Vegas RV Resort neighbor adieu and drove the final 305-miles home to Simi Valley, California. While in Las Vegas, I had spent under $20 to get my Kanab flat tire repaired and ready for redeployment. As luck would have it, my final dash through the Mojave Desert was uneventful. The following week, I visited Simi RV. The parts specialist there had a Dometic refrigerator thermo fuse replacement kit hanging on the rack. The RV refrigerator failure at the beginning of my trip had been an inconvenience, but not a full-scale disaster. Looking back, I had spent $24 for three temporary foam coolers, $30 for two Igloo permanent coolers and $15 for ice, just to keep my food from rotting. Then I spent $168 for the unneeded printed circuit board (PCB), $34 to exchange the PCB for a proper spare. I paid another $212 for a technician in Aztec, New Mexico to fully diagnose the thermo fuse issue. Adding $65 for my new thermo-fuse replacement kit brought the grand total for RV refrigerator repairs to over $550.

While purchasing my new thermo fuse replacement kit, I told the owner of Simi RV about my refrigerator issue. He said that other owners of some Cougar and Montana model RVs had experienced similar thermo-fuse failures. With a lot of research and testing, he had determined that wind created a low-pressure area along the side of the RV. Wind entering the upper vent was making the propane flame burn too hot, thus burning out the thermo-fuse. The remedy was to put an aluminum wing or baffle at the leading edge of the refrigerator vent. That would deflect the passing air around the refrigerator unit and keep the flame operating at the proper temperature.

Since my RV is beyond its warranty period, he could fix the problem, but Simi RV had almost a three month wait for service. Instead, we agreed that I would complete my own repair. He gave me an unfinished, bent piece of aluminum, which I customized to my satisfaction, including a black paint job. I installed long screws, which passed through my new creation and into the structure of the upper RV vent. Soon, I shall take another RV trip, which will include a live test of my new baffle.

On the bright side, for $550 I got my RV refrigerator working. For that amount, I also now have the equivalent of an associate degree in RV refrigerator repair. Since I was able to avoid scuttling my annual, two-week visit to the Four Corners Region, I believe it was all well worth the price. After a subsequent RV trip to Morro Bay, California, I am happy to report that my refrigeration issue appears to be solved.

This concludes Part Five of a Five-Part Article. To return to Part One, click HERE.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 03:39 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

It Is Time To Decommission Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam - 2015

 

It Is Time To Decommission Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam

The Lower Colorado River Basin -

The Lower Colorado River Basin begins at the cold, sterile outfall of Glen Canyon Dam. From that point on, the river again receives sediment from various streams and seasonal watercourses. Tributaries such as the Little Colorado River and Kanab Creek join the river, but provide only a fraction of the sediment that enters Lake Powell. Lake Powell loses as much as 5.6% of its volume annually to a combination of evaporation and seepage into its sandstone basin. As a result, the toxic load of chemicals, fertilizer and heavy metals from upstream is concentrated in the Lower Colorado River. Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey identified raised levels of both selenium and mercury in the Grand Canyon watershed.

Grand Canyon Country -

After the Civil War, officer and veteran John Wesley Powell explored the length of the Grand Canyon. Attempts to protect the Grand Canyon began early in the twentieth century. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt first declared a game preserve there and in 1908, he used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create Grand Canyon National Monument. In 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service, congress created Grand Canyon National Park. In 1975, the former Marble Canyon National Monument, which followed the Colorado River northeast from the Grand Canyon to Lee's Ferry, became part of Grand Canyon National Park. In 1956, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) began building of Glen Canyon Dam. Until that time, “more dams in more places” on the Colorado River was the rallying cry of federal land managers.

In the early 1960s, the USBR touted plans for Marble Dam in Marble Canyon, downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam and Bridge Canyon Dam downstream from the Grand Canyon itself. Slowly, the populace and land managers alike realized that the Colorado River could not support so many storage facilities along its watercourse. Even with optimistic flow projections, the collection of proposed dams would never be full, let alone half-full. After the victorious building Glen Canyon Dam, promoters of federal dam projects along the Colorado River had to look elsewhere for places to build their socialist make-work projects.

The original rationale for building Glen Canyon Dam was to help regulate periodic flooding within the Lower Colorado River Basin. In that regard, Glen Canyon Dam became a classic case of “overkill”. Not only did the dam regulate water flow in an unnatural manner, it also sterilized whatever remaining water flowed through both Marble and Grand Canyons. There were no spring floods to rearrange and propel various sediments downstream. Without periodic recharging of sediments, beaches and shoals disappeared from the watercourse. Without new sediments to impede flow, the river scoured away the remaining sediments, including rocks and boulders of immense size. In the end, it was as if a slow motion flood had taken the life out of the river.

Only dissolved solids, such as salts and heavy metals could make it through the sieve that is the mudflats of upper Lake Powell. In recent years, regulatory authorities at Glen Canyon Dam have allowed several simulated floods to recharge the beaches and hollows necessary for a more diverse ecosystem in Marble and Grand Canyons. Even so, most of the sediments required to sustain life downstream remain trapped in the methane volcano-fields at the upper reaches of Lake Powell. If one were to plan today for the least healthy Lower Colorado River possible, Glen Canyon Dam would be an essential aspect of that plan.

Lake Mead -

Currently, Lake Mead covers approximately 247 square miles, while Lake Powell covers a slightly larger 254 square miles. At Hoover Dam, the surrounding geology includes “K-T Volcanics”, which are mostly "Cretaceous and Tertiary andesitic and basaltic flows". In other words, both Hoover Dam and Lake Mead rest on old, hard rock. Glen Canyon Dam resides in and Lake Powell rest upon younger, softer and more permeable sandstone. Once water reaches Lake Mead, a bit less than one percent of it evaporates annually.
Comparing Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

The generally accepted figure for annual evaporation at Lake Powell is about three percent. Because of its porous, sandstone shell, Lake Powell loses an additional 2.6% of inflow to seepage. The dry sandstone under and around Lake Powell is like an insatiable sponge, constantly drawing water away from the reservoir. If we compare the .09% evaporation loss and negligible seepage at Lake Mead to the 5.6% total evaporation and seepage at Lake Powell, we find that Lake Mead is 6.2 times more efficient at preventing environmental loss of volume. In the old days, one might call that a differential calculus or maybe even a quantum leap.

If the main goal is to preserve and conserve water in both the Upper and Lower Colorado Basins, Lake Mead is the best place to do that. If Lake Mead were at full capacity, it would grow from the present surface area of 247 square miles to a total of 255 square miles, or a positive change of 3.2%. In both lakes, evaporation is largely dependent on surface area and insolation. By reducing Lake Powell to “dead pool” size and increasing Lake Mead to near full capacity, water losses due to both evaporation and seepage along the Colorado River would decrease dramatically.

The Navajo Nation -

As a political and cultural entity, the Navajo Nation has had a long and difficult relationship with coal. To this day, many Navajo homes burn coal for both cooking and heat. At Black Mesa, near Kayenta, Arizona, large-scale mining destroyed the underlying aquifer and left a moonscape of physical destruction on the surface. In recent decades, aging coal-fired facilities such as the Four Corners Generating Plant, west of Farmington, New Mexico and Navajo Generating Station (NGS), near Page, Arizona came under increased scrutiny. As a result, the Navajo Nation doubled down on coal by completing various ownership and responsibility agreements designed to keep the coal fires burning.

Ignoring the health and welfare consequences of an old energy, coal economy, the Navajo Nation sought to justify its new status as a gross polluter of the environment. To do this, they invoked the sanctity and necessity of jobs in the mining, transportation and production of coal-fired energy. In sad consanguinity with Navajo/corporate mining deals of the past, the Navajo Nation has accepted ill health and decreased life expectancy for its people. In exchange for a minimal number of old energy jobs, the Navajo Nation continues to degraded the environment of All that Is.

The Correct Course of Action -

There are advocates for keeping Lake Powell half-full and Lake Mead half-full. In their justifications, they point to Lake Powell tourism, payment of long-term indebtedness, loss of power production and water delivery to Page Arizona and NGS as primary reasons for maintaining the status quo. They pass off the higher seepage and evaporation rates at Lake Powell by saying, “Water evaporates – get over it”.

Scientific studies of evaporation and other storage losses are now under peer review. Preliminary findings indicate that emptying Lake Powell to dead pool size and transferring its contents downstream to Lake Mead could save up to one million acre-feet of water annually. To put that into perspective, the City of Los Angeles consumes about one million acre-feet of water annually. That amounts to almost one fourth of California's annual allotment of Colorado River water.

Lake Powell has become a beautiful anachronism in the desert. It is an oasis built over a sinkhole, and has failed as an efficient water storage scenario. On the strength of water conservation alone, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation should decommission Lake Powell. For a transitional period, both NGS and the City of Page, Arizona could continue to draw water as Lake Powell reduces toward dead pool size. Over time, Page would likely shrink economically nearer to what it was before exuberant boosters and developers began publicizing luxury houseboats and “lake view estates”. Once again, river runners and rafters will develop new businesses based in Page.

Once we scientifically determine that the Navajo Generating Station is a climate change engine, responsible parties will find alternative, more progressive energy sources for air-conditioning or to pump water around the West. New energy technologies will arise to pump Colorado River water over several mountain ranges during its trip to to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. If Arizona residents and politicians reject new technologies and logical courses of action, they will be the first and hardest hit of all Colorado River stakeholders. In 2015, only an exceptional monsoon season allowed Arizona relief from mandatory reductions in water withdrawals from the Colorado River .

If the people of Arizona support the recombination of two dying reservoirs into a single healthy one, they may avoid future mandatory cutbacks and major scale water rationing. By installing solar and wind power near the pumps along the Central Arizona Project, Arizona could reduce or eliminate its reliance on NGS and dirty coal. Phasing out NGS over a period of ten years should allow sufficient time for installation of new and renewable energy sources for vital water pumping functions. Federal incentives and business development investment in Navajoland should offset any jobs now held by Black Mesa black-lung miners and the stokers of the coal fires at NGS.

Some people say that human activities have no net effect on our world, our environment or our prospects for a sustainable future. Others believe that human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels are the root cause of Climate Change, Global Warming and the looming Sixth Extinction. If that Sixth Extinction comes to pass, will we be mere observers or its final living participants? Sixty-five million years hence, some intelligent species may come to Earth and study the last remaining fossils of humankind. After visiting the petrified mudflats that once were the upper reaches of Lake Powell, imagine the scientific conclusions of those future visitors; “They could have saved themselves, but did not care enough about Nature to do so”.

The Benefits of Correct Action -

I almost forgot to mention, if we decommission Glen Canyon Dam, the real and original Glen Canyon of the Colorado would reappear. If so, we can all watch as Mother Nature repairs that Eden in the Desert to its previous glory. If still living, both John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey would approve.

This is Part 3 of a three-part article. To begin at Part 1, please click HERE. To return to Part 2, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 12:01 AM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link