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...... '3-2-"17 .,.,..~ '.J~,y") -(...v .~ ;- Kp(:~~c..;#rAj\J /V~.). Science ~ RECI;lYs,R,,, """ MAR 0 7 1997 ':>lll ,Mtlll,:ll.t., .) Co!orado Water ~gAt"rJ7.tiQn 'i;lQ"'r..... Mike Anton, Science Editor - 892-2327 . ..mall- science@denveNmn.com Research, medicin & the environmen Patrick Davlsorv'RocKy Mountain New .coking over Lake Powell from Arizona, bottom, to the Utah border, top, visitors can get a majestic view of the new Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. a time and charted the secret places tucked along a shoreline longer than the entire coast of Washington, Ore- gon and California. In 1965,Jones drew a map and made 750 copies. He sold them all in 10 days. Now Jones sells 40,000 maps a year. In the summer, thousands cam~ along the shore. In 1995, 2.5 million people visited Glen Canyon. Califor' nians come in herds to rent jet skis and houseboats, to revel in the soli- tude or to party, party, party, And when the tourists come, Stan and Alice Jones escape to a lake in Cul- orado. "Every time I gripe about the crowds, people say, 'Hell, you brought 'em here,'" Jones said. Peo- ple in Page, Ariz.. call him "Mr. Lake Powell." He loves the lake: he loves the dam. He wrote a souvenir guidebook and everyone who reads it knows Glen Canyon was named the "Out- standing Civil Engineering Achieve- ment" of 1964 by the American Sod. ety of Civil Engineers: Jones laughs at the Idea of dr<llOin~ his beloved lake. "It's asinine," he said. "I can't think of a harder word (hat would be clean. The lake is 37 years old. All the people who are interested in draining the lake had 20 years to make their proposal before the dam rHE FACTS . Glen Canyon Dam, a oncrete dam completed , 1963. is 710 feet taU Ind up to 350 feet thick. . The dam contains light generating units ..it/t..8totalcapacityof .,32:0 megawatts, or 'nough electricity fOf i38,OOO households. . Lake Powell is the .econd.largest artificial ~ke in the country, after .ake Mead. Lake Powell ;; named after Maj. John Vesley Powell, the first Inglo man to explore the Irea, in 1869. SOUrce: Glen canyon lalionaIRecreaur;mArea. Naturll Bridles lI!l'IMon: ~~: <lO"..tii?~i !to RI~Bro:li~.N~P';'-i Ol.n NUllO Can)lln . Nltionll Dam Nonumenl I ~" . i ~-"'p1eCI"YOIl J ".P:~'~:i;;;kiMQ"';tii,; News ",,,..' . By Usa Lmlt Ryckmlln Rocky Mountai" News Stoff Writer Thirty years ago, a dam turned Glen Canyon into an enonnous bathtub, a holding tank for enough Colorado River water to Quench the ever-growing thirst of California, Arizona and Nevada. It took three years and nearly 5 million cubic feet of concrete and vol- canic ash to build Glen Canyon Dam. Behind it, Lake Powell backed up 186 miles along the Arizona-Utah line. It took 17 years to fill. Now the Sierra Club wants to pull the plug, to rewrite Western water law and to resurrect a river. Some dismiss the whole idea as the romantic rantings of just so many tree-hugging loonies. Undoing this dam would take an un- precedented alignment of state governments, courts and Congress. But this is the Sierra Club. The archetypal environmental powerhouse, the visionaries, the trailblazers, the dam breakers, the deal makers- who have spent 40 years regretting the deal that built Glen Canyon Dam. In that time, the story of Glen Canyon has taken on a significance larger than the lake itself, a tale of environ- mental remorse of almost mythic propbr!iPP~; !i'IP ~ . III Sierra Club says it made a mistake 40 years ago, now wants to unplug Glen Canyon Dam story of how in the heyday of big-dam building, the Sierra Club traded away a magical canyon its leaders had never seen to preserve a piece of the national park system. It was an act later regretted by politicians and conservationists alike, one immortalized in author Edward Abbey's story of commando-environ. mentalism, The Monkeywrench Gang, In that story, th'-.- ':lam gets blown up. Now the Sierra Club wants to undo an environmental disaster of its own making before Lake Powell is clogged with sediment, and the canyon is lost forever. But the people who love the lake, who live off it, who manage the water . and the power and the tourists- , . : :e;ven ~ose who knew Glen Canyon ",,,,,. '."'- before the dam - have their own take on whether a river should run through it again. "We aren't so deluded that we think this is going to be easy," said Bruce Hamilton, the club's national conservation director. "But we think it's up to groups like ours to lay forth a vision of environmental restoration. "We think Glen Canyon was one of the biggest mistakes we ever made on the Colorado River. And you've got to recognize those mistakes and try to fix them. Because we owe it to future generations." For thl'M yurs, Stan Jones navi. gated Lake Powell in a very small boat. He slept on the grolIDd each 1"1rghttforthre~ week!! a~ , , . ~ ". :; I I : I : " . : ' . I . See POWELL on 67A