A Once-Great River Rises on the Colorado Plateau
The Upper Colorado River Basin -
By the time the Colorado River passes Moab, Utah, it already carries a heavy load of minerals, trash and sewage. By mid-summer, water levels drop, exposing driftwood, sewage and trash along the shore. Only the next spring flood
will loosen these stinking mixtures of organic material and plastic
from the shoreline. In 2014, when I saw methane bubbles rising from one
such stinking mass, it opened my eyes wide to the damage already done
to this once great river.
A Place Called Potash, Utah -
After skirting the Matheson Wetlands along one bank and the Moab Pile on the other, the Colorado River descends through the Portal and on to a place called Potash, Utah. To make potash sound more interesting, the owners of the Cane Creek Potash Plant
named themselves "Intrepid" Potash-Moab, LLC. Using dubious and
undocumented Colorado River water rights, Intrepid Potash-Moab infuses
millions of gallons of river water annually into the Cane Creek
Anticline.
After injection, the anticline collapses ever so slightly. This
subsidence burps out untold acre-feet of a brine solution, which is
rich in potash salts. After drying and processing, Intrepid-Moab ships
the resulting product out via rail and interstate highway. Later, agents and retailers resell the packaged product to farmers and home gardeners.
The success of the corporate farming, as we know it today depends on
finished potash and other synthetic fertilizers for its success.
Intrepid-Moab
uses solar power to dry its potash brine in shallow, lined ponds.
These ponds cover many colorful acres of bench land overlooking the
Colorado River. From the Potash Road, four-wheelers access the Shafer Trail
by traversing through the Cane Creek Plant. If terrestrial scenes of
chemical degradation and poor stewardship of the land are not enough
for you, I suggest an air tour of the area. On a Redtail Aviation flight out of Moab’s Canyonlands Field several years ago, our pilot banked the plane sufficiently for me to capture some revealing photos of the Cane Creek Plant.
Gushing from injection well sites that are high up on the bench land,
the upwelling brine cascades unchecked until it reaches the settling
ponds below. Any miscalculation of volume could result in overflow of
the settling ponds. From the air, you can see a white crust that has
dried upon the walls of small canyons leading down to the Colorado
River. This tells me that Intrepid Potash-Moab has experienced both
overflow and leakage at the settling ponds. 
Dwarfing
any inputs upstream in Utah and Colorado, Intrepid Potash-Moab could be
the largest contributor of organic solids anywhere in the Upper
Colorado River Basin. After potash spills into the river, it goes back
into solution, adding to the salinity of the water and turning the
river into an organic time bomb.
Mudflats and Methane Volcanoes -
After its confluence with the Green River,
the first full stop for the Colorado River is at the upper reaches of
Lake Powell in Southeastern Utah. Soon after the lake reached its full
potential size in the early 1980s, its water level began to fluctuate
and then decline. During the past fourteen years of persistent drought,
Lake Powell lost nearly half of its peak volume. Today, optimists
might say that Lake Powell is “half full”. Almost unanimously, climate
scientists agree that the reservoir is “half empty” and will continue to
decline.
With many miles of former lakebed exposed to sunlight at the upper end of Lake Powell, the environment on those mudflats
has deteriorated significantly. As water laden with heavy metals and
organic material arrives at the upper end of the lake, it mixes with
silt and sand. The result is a phenomenon known as methane volcanoes.
Methane gas can be a byproduct of flatulence in cattle, coal mining or
the baking of organic mud. Most people are familiar with carbon
dioxide as our most ubiquitous “greenhouse gas”. Fewer people might know
that methane is fifteen times more powerful as a greenhouse gas
than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide puts the effervescent fizz in our
soft drinks. Methane smells bad, is flammable and if contained, may
explode.
The Navajo Reservation is Coal Country -
First,
the stinking, organic mudflats at the upper end of Lake Powell create
and release untold amounts of methane gas. Usually, warm air and light
gases like methane rise from the surface and dissipate in the upper
atmosphere. Often methane from Lake Powell remains in the lower
atmosphere, trapped near the ground by an atmospheric inversion layer.
If an atmospheric inversion is present, warm air aloft traps hot and
volatile gasses below, thus creating a bubble of noxious air at or near
ground level.
Not ironically, a huge methane gas bubble now floats above the Four Corners region. Is this unprecedented bubble of volatile gas the result of Navajo Nation coal mining, cattle flatulence
or the stinking mudflats and methane volcanoes at the upper reaches of
Lake Powell? Personally, I am betting on a combination of coal mining
and fertilized mudflats. Thank you for your fertile potash input,
Intrepid Potash-Moab, LLC.
Glen Canyon Damned -
After
flowing over and sifting through the mudflats, the Colorado River
enters many miles of forced confinement between sandstone canyon walls.
There it drops its remaining sediment to the bottom of what once was a
desert garden of legendary beauty. Known as Glen Canyon,
living humans who saw it in its untrammeled glory are now few and
elderly. Only through old black and white photographs and essays by
such writers as John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey do we know about a place once visited only by dory boat or river raft.
Once the water in Lake Powell reaches the penstocks and electrical
turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, it is cold, dark and nearly devoid of
oxygen. The portion of lake water that rests below the deepest intake
on the dam, we call the “dead pool”. The lake water in the dead pool is
as near to dead as fresh water can 
be.
Once released downstream, dam water is clear, cold and capable of
supporting no life higher than green fronded algae. Such algae grow
wherever the water flow is slow enough to support life. If Colorado
means, “colored red” or “Red River”, immediately below Glen Canyon Dam,
that name does not apply. Running clear, cold and fringed with green
algae, its name should revert to “Green River”.
This is Part 1 of a three-part article. To read Part 2, please click HERE.
By James McGillis at 02:56 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link
