Glen Canyon Dam Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Glen Canyon Dam is located in Arizona on the Colorado River just south of the Utah border. The reservoir behind the dam floods hundreds of side canyons and 180 miles (290 kilometers) of the Colorado River through Glen Canyon. It is the second-highest concrete-arch dam in the United States.

When briefly full, Lake Powell was the second-largest reservoir in the Western Hemisphere. According to Steve Carothers and Bryan Brown, Glen Canyon Dam was originally designed to facilitate the delivery of water from “upper basin states” (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming) to “lower basin states” (Arizona, Nevada, and California) and Mexico under the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Additional purposes include flood control, water storage, environmental and recreational needs, and power generation. The dam was approved in 1956, and after construction and much controversy, the lake began to fill in January 1963. Glen Canyon Dam has the capacity to generate 1,300 megawatts if the reservoir is full (elevation of 3,700 feet [1,138 meters]). However, Lake Powell took 17 years to fill and was only at its peak volume for five years (1980-85). Consequently, average power generation has been in the range of 500 megawatts.

Controversial Impacts

Glen Canyon Dam was controversial from the beginning and remains so today. Adverse impacts for the Navajo (or Dine) people include loss of religious and cultural sites throughout the flooded canyon. In 1974 members of the Dine sued the Department of the Interior (DOI), Bureau of Reclamation, and National Park Service (NPS) over flooding of religious sites and inability to conduct ceremonies in the vicinity of Rainbow Bridge. The few people of European descent who had floated down Glen Canyon described the hundreds of side canyons and glens as the most beautiful place any had ever seen. For novelist Edward Abbey, Glen Canyon was “the heart of the Colorado Plateau.” Sierra Club Executive Director David Brower led a fight to prevent the filling of the reservoir. Although not successful in stopping the project, this conflict was extremely formative in the lives of many environmental leaders and shaped the direction of the modern environmental movement.

Water released from Glen Canyon Dam flows into Grand Canyon National Park. Significant ecological impacts in Grand Canyon include artificially low water temperatures (47 degrees F), blockage of sediment, and substantial fluctuations in flows due to power generation. The river currently fluctuates daily between 8,000-20,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). Until 1963, flows varied from 3,000 in fall and winter to 90,000 cfs during spring runoff. Floods brought sediment critical for building beaches, replenishing the nutrient base on the river’s shores and creating backwater habitat for juvenile fish as the water receded. Endangered fish in the river now include the humpback chub, bonytail sucker, and razorback sucker.

Drought, increased water demand, and global climate change resulted in progressively lower lake levels during the 1990s. In 2005, the lake dropped low enough to expose famous sites, including Cathedral in the Desert, sites of importance to Mormon Pioneers, and sacred sites for the Dine nation. In the face of significant ecological impacts and lower lake levels, discussions over dam removal have begun. Arguments against dam removal include loss of hydropower, recreation activities and income, inability to regulate flows, and loss of the trout fishery below the dam. Those in favor of dam removal note ecological benefits to the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon, that scarce water is lost through evaporation and seepage into the porous sandstone, and that Hoover Dam could control the Colorado River without Lake Powell, thus producing more power, while saving money and increasing habitat.

Bibliography:

Steve Carothers and Bryan Brown, The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon: Natural History and Human Change (University of Arizona Press, 1991);
Phillip Fradkin, A River No More: The Colorado River and the West (University of California Press, 1996);
Russel Martin, The Story That Stands Like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West (Henry Holt, 1999);
John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1990);
Elliot Porter, The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (Sierra Club Books, 1963).