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Rocky Mountain News W.,.. Cook talks about the law oithe river; which is his was builtH 'It h~pens there was a life. He is executive direc- greateJ.humber of people who saw tor of the Upper Colorado River the merit of building the dam. So Commission, representing the the dam was built. And the lake is water interests of the four upper here," basin states: Colorado. Wyoming, i~""':-"7-"..' New Mexico and Utah. R':> . ichard Inpbretsen Is a physi. Cook has no counterpart in the dan and a physicist at the three lower basin states of CaliCoe. University of Utah, but his nia, Arizona and Nevada. They ~ real passion is to reclaim Glen have spent 50 years bickering and J Canyon. He first saw what was left suing each other over the river; and l of it when he was 8, on a boat trip they couldn't agree on one person I, on brand new Lake Powell. What to represent them. was about to be lost saddened him The fact is, population of the even then. lower basin is growing faster than He wants it back. that oithe upper basin. but its .' For 20 years, Ingebretsen has share of the water has been con- i rafted down the Colorado, shot the stant for 75 years, ever since the rapids and landed in the place seven states signed the Colorado where the river dies near the dam. River Compact. Under that agree~ ;j '. ~lt.'sa.stunningfeeling," he ment, the upperbasindelivers 7.5 .. ~ .emp~ And Y9~feel million acre-feet of water a year to :: ed. Only man can appre- the lower basin. An acre-foot is " . undings. God has enough water to serve a family of 1 il'Pjlity. And we rqin four for a year. ,I bwlfe~l about Gl~.l Lake Powell holds water so that 1 assacrilege:.""';. the upper basin can fuIfill its agree- i mics arci c>,Jiis ~i4e~$1id ment, even in'a drought year. Emp- I en, whQ 1OIlJ!, ded ll1~,' , tying Lake Powell might mean nJnstit\lte.J'~ renegotiating the law of the rive~ 1 pt~u of ~tin, as complex and controversial a ! ~:4a/n, $h9l't body ollaw as has ever heen cob- t ~ loses JD.O~ ~ bled together: ons-at' to< '... "Sbould that be changed? Well, ~ -'arid '~k sf%farg;.. l'm an upper basin guy, and I can j - the water sucked up by the tell you It shouldn't be changed," ~ ~yon'sredsandstone walls. Cook said. "We agreed to it in 1922. l The lake is filling with sem- And the lower basin states have an , ment, everyone agrees. Eventual- obligation to live by the water they ly, it no longer will be capable of got under the tenns of the com- generating any power. Whether pact" that will happen in 100 years or Draining Lake Powell might help 500 years depends on whether the recover some of the evaporative estimate comes from Ingebretsen loss, Cook agreed, but where or the Bureau of Reclamation. would that water go then? To the "This is inevitable," loge- lower basin? bretsen said. "We have to deal "Just because the lower basin is with the power, we have to deal growingfaster. they ought to have with the loss of water, we have to all the water?" he asked. "That deal with the sedimentation." flies in the face of why the compact So, he says, pull the plug and was put in place in the first place:' reap the rewards: The eventual The whole idea smacks ofelit- return of one of the most spectac- ism, Cook said. "They can have ul~ ~yons in the Southwest - their canyon back. and to hell with more stunning than the Grand the rest of the economic develop- Canyon, say people who saw it. ment and the rest of however many The conservation of enough water million of us live up here. to grow five more cities the size of "That sounds like a harsh Fsi- Salt Lake City on the desert. And tion," he said "I don't mean It to enough beer bottles and soda cans be. But that's the bottom line." on the lake floor to turn a few enterprising individuals into mil- lionaires. "We're not doing something evil here,"lngebretsen said. "We're restoring Glen Canyon, which will be a wonderful boon to southern Utah and northern Arizona. We're saving the Grand Canyon. We're saving the Sea of Cortez: We're building five new cities in the Southwest that cannot develop with Lake Powell there. And ifthe cost of that is (giving) up a power plant 100 years sooner, then give up the power plant 100 years sooner. "We understand that if we just drained Lake Powell, all hell would break loose. Pigs will fly first:' The draining, Ingebretsen said, would be done over a period of years. And it would require a change in the law of the river, a change he believes is long over- . due. It's a change that would bene- fit Ca1ifornia, Arizona and Nevada by ensuring they can provide water for a constant stream of new residents. "When the taps go dry - and theywill- there will be no debate onthis." Sun., ~arch 2, 1997 POIIEU. from 6IIA ,=,~.:;...' down, it's going up in the casino tloor," he said. Puckett's not sure what's to be gained, either. "The thing that blows me away is that we'd recover these red rock sandstone walls. Like we got a shortage of those. We're damn near out of them. I mean, we ain't got more than 800 square miles of them now," he said. "It makes you wonder. It really does:' J OM 5bnleyaaw and loved Glen Canyon when it was stilI a canyon. Herfatherwasamong the first guides on the river. Later, she and her husband ran river trips. And when the government pro- posed damming Glen Canyon, they fought it very; very hard. Now, as director of the Page Chamber of Commerce, she would fight very, very hard to prevent the draining of Lake Powell, "The thought of redestroying something [ dearly loved for the second time breaks my heart," she sa;d. Staveley fears the water already has ruined the Glen Canyon she knew. Once the lake is gone, the canyon walls would be stained with what folks around here call the "bathtub ring," a whitish residue that appears when the lake level drops. "Thank heavens I saw Glen Canyon. But itwon't be like it was. Everything will be dead," Slaveley said. ''That was one of the greatest single channs of Glen Canyon, that's why it was named 'glen.' The greenery; the wate& That can't be reclaimed. It's not realistic to think it would be reclaimed. ifs going to take hundreds of years. IT eVe!:" D....__sa;d that if you are against a dam, you are for a river: He is forthe river, and he is for the canyon itnms through- the canyon he agreed to saaifice 40 years ago. In the 19508, as the first executive director of the Sierra Qub, Brower fought the battle to save Dinosaur National Monument As aresuit, there is no dam near the point where the Green River meets the Yampa Rive>: But Glen Canyon was the price Browerpaid "I think at that point back then, (the Sierra Club boanl of directorn) thought it was going to be too much to ask to do anything more than save Dinosaur National Monument as part oftheparl< system," he said. So when they told Brower to back off on Glen. he did, He had never seen Glen Canyon. When he finally got there, he knew he had made the mistake of a lifetime. Now. at the age of 84-. he has the ammunition he needs, straight from the Bureau of Reclamation itse1f. A million acre-feet of water is lost each year from Lake Powell through evaporation and seepage-one- third more thananticipated. That's too much water to lose in a region without a drop to spare. So last fuIJ, he went to the Sierra Club directorn and asked them to sup- port the reclamation of Glen Canyon. Andthat'showtheideagotstart- ed. ' '1t was rea1Iy a strange thing where the Sierra Club directors had told me to stop lighting it back in 1956.And in 1996, that they would ':- '~,- ,,-..,:~~;... unanimously vote to drain it, mal me feel pretty good," he said. "It took a long time." Lake Mead can hold enough water for the next 200years or Sl Brower believes. But he would leave Glen Canyon darn in place, the time when it might be needa again. In dry spells, he agreed, th upper basin states might not be a to deliver what they've agreed lo But there will be 1 million extra acre-feetrunning down the river rest of the time, so it won't matte: as much. "And in a drought year, they cal send the bill to God," he said. A year ago at the University of Utah, Browerdebated Floyd Dominy about Glen Canyon. It wa matchup between legends: Browl who stood against the dams and fc the rivers; and Dominy, the fonne U.S. commissioner of reclamation who built all the l.Lms he could. Twenty~five years earlier, on a raft trip together on the Colorado, Dominy promised to send Brower pair of bookends made from core samples from Glen Canyon Dam.... "Nothing could support a set of ,- Sierra Club books better," he told Brower then. He still hasn't sent the bookend And Brower hasn't forgotten them or the pain he feels over the loss of Glen Canyon. . "I think it will be the most out. standing restoration project on the planet," Brower said '~d it will help the people in other coWltries begin to rethink -.. That's the important thing, The whole big clan idea has happened in my lifetime. And I think it was a pretty major mistake." If.......... to five at the main launch at Wahweap, Ariz., at the southern end of Lake Powell. Jerry "Buhba" Puckellloads his clients into a boat for a day's fish. ing, bound for the Sanjuan arm of the lake. It's 80 miles on liquid satin. Not a ripple. Theyfish for hours, and some. times the fish are so thick,just throwing your line in is like trolling a porkchop in a dog pound. The whole day, they'd see maybe five other boats. And this is the Fourth ofJuly. "It's the closest I've ever come to motorized wilderness activity," said Puckett, who moved to Page 10 years ago to raise his two sons. He has built a life around Lake Powell. He likes to think he's environ- menta1lyaware. He'd like to be sympathetic to the Sierra Club idea. But there are problems. '~ent the ability to control the runoff, what you suppose all them people down there in Laughlin (Nev.) are going to dp,in,thern casi- nos? 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