![]() ![]() If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. ![]() Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do. For years, we’ve pointed out that much of the Colorado River ‘crisis’ has been caused by the mere existence of Glen Canyon Dam, and that bypassing or removing the Dam should be an obvious alternative under consideration.”īy signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. As Gary Wockner, director of Save the Colorado, said in a press release after viewing the Bureau’s presentation on the dam, “We’re pleased to see the federal government proposing to bypass Glen Canyon Dam with tunnels. And it’s going to take a long, long time.”īut other water watchers are more optimistic. John Weisheit, the founder of the Utah environmental group Living Rivers and an advocate for tearing down the dam, told the Los Angeles Times this week that the proposed modifications represented “too much investment for very little return. But the proposal is expensive, complicated, and time consuming. The Bureau of Reclamation, which regulates water delivery from the Colorado River, recently proposed a new plan to keep water flowing around the dam: tunnels. Such a scenario would leave nearly 2 million acre-feet of stagnant river water stranded behind the dam, unable to reach the lower watershed. With its antique and poorly-designed plumbing, the dam simply won’t function if the water behind it drops below 240 feet. Scientists have known for a long time that the dam is obsolete. ![]() Edward Abbey’s landmark novel The Monkey Wrench Gang was based on a plot to blow up the structure.Īt this point, blowing up the dam might not be such a bad idea. “Such an event would likely be the most calamitous in the Colorado River System’s history, causing legal complications, economic harm, and a water supply crisis across the seven states and Mexico.”Įnvironmentalists have long hated the Glen Canyon Dam, which submerged beautiful canyons, caused environmental degradation, and harmed endangered fish in the Grand Canyon. “Lake Powell is quickly approaching the point at which it may soon become physically impossible to pass enough water through the dam,” warned an August report by regional environmental groups. If the water level in Lake Powell falls another 150 feet from its current level, the reservoir will hit dead pool, meaning that the Colorado River will no longer run through the dam, stopping flow to booming populations in Arizona and Nevada, as well as to Mexico and the agricultural areas of California’s Imperial Valley. One underappreciated element of this looming crisis is Glen Canyon Dam itself. While this year’s above average snowpack may help, even the Bureau of Reclamation, which historically has wildly overestimated the Colorado River’s flow, expects Lake Powell to drop another 30 feet by September. Over the past year, federal officials have ordered emergency water releases from upstream reservoirs, such as Utah’s Flaming Gorge, to prop up the lake and keep the dam’s turbines turning and providing electricity. “It may soon become physically impossible to pass enough water through.”Ĭreated by the 1963 construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell is the nation’s second-largest reservoir. A 23-year megadrought combined with climate change has left the reservoir at just 22 percent of its capacity-so low that it threatens to cause the collapse of a water supply system serving 40 million people throughout the arid west. ![]() The water level at Lake Powell, the massive reservoir on the Colorado River whose southern reaches straddle the Utah-Arizona border, hit a record low this week, sinking to just 3,522 feet above sea level. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. ![]()
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