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JI..uIUlM:ln. wuwu.: .1.utf.t\l:'-W-ej~UUUU'o .' ,. 10 is amusing, ymfWOUld have enjoyed rings, duI';ng which the ~ that the icaJlyfur sale was _l!lsr,lgardM in discussion about exactly how President ' it Gore grubbed for money, and especially moneY ON federal prot>ertY(Bad.l)orOFF ' rubbed fur Il\OIlOY lhlm foreign sleazebags ags(OK!). ~, who ofcourse have spent the es grubbing for money, expressed great campaign financing works, So did ce President Gore. They had no idea! So ngton is fed up with the cutrent sYstem. msagree: Ifs time for REAL reform, darn nd! And thus itappearsthat, after yeats of , and truly will have meaningful ~ just as soon ~ we-establlSh a viable trout leaders will continue to grub relentlessly 10 this'! .18 it because they're hypocritical - rtaridarris Oft8peW6i'ms? t their fault! Tbey have no choice! Because you can get elected to high office is to hire ho conduct: expensive poDs to find out d then, having found outlhal the votors are sliine, make expensive TV u show a hideously unflattering nent and have a snarling announcer say _ would lJkeyou to believethat mnan babies. Who's he tryingtofool?" lid ofcampaign, you can't get elected; and )u~'trealizethe1deallst1cdreanfthat n the first place: theclream of_ h:Dow: S1eazeballs who want government ticlans, who give it to consultants, ncies and television stations, who get you bo thus get more money from sleazeballs. y wrong with this, voters?ThafsCOITect: vemment that your Founding Fathers ing sold over and over like a used mobile GE'ITlNG A CUT! Me should have a fair, honest and ,by the moneywonld,., directly lhlm the rhafs right I say we eliminate the d put the donors directly into offtce. The l'd ,.,Into the voting booth, and there ::ompetingfur each otfice. and next to each umber indicating _many dollars the for your vote. When you pulled that would inunEdiately come out of a slot in ,this, voter turnout woUld be WAY higher, result is that we'd elect people who were :. or who were being given a congressional . 8th birthday. In other words, it would not )w. So I say we adopt my plan. First we ltutlnn. AssumJng it has nol been snId. .roIunJntstj'or The M/4miHernld. c /,:~./~ .:c~t:r[;>;:i;;',,,;~ '.,~\;-;,:; c';;:,' -\,' :Gt:'~!:-::;1::[f;~':'.0~:Y"-: ;t':~)_\'!i;)~;~;'.' " . -.~, I , , - " ., ' ' ' -- , , . GLEN CANYON: Hearingslsfstep in fightf6r th0se who want to drain Powell, , -, - ~ ,QJliiuedIoo1"",1D former employee of the Bureau of Reclamation, started a group known as the Glen Canyon Institute. Their goal is simple: Return Glen Canyon , to the way it was more than 30 years ago, before :the waters behind the. dam slowly filled what they call "one of the lnost beautiful- places on earth," Rich8rd 'lngebretsen, physician and physics professor, saw' Glen Canyon only once before it became a lake. AB a Boy Scout in the early 1.9OOs, he floated the river and hiked the 3) -miles to Rainbow Bridge, a place seen by only a few thousand people before the dain was built The.trip made' a lasting :impres- sion on lngebretsen. He was awed by the beauty and the peace he found there, The next time he made it to Rain- bow Bridge, lngebretsen was in a power boat on Lake Powell. Thanks to the ris'ing water, the site was now widely accessible, a short easy hike. lngebretsen made it back to Rain. bow Bridge, but what he saw didn't impress hJm this time, "It was so sad," he said. "Tbe whole thing was ruined. Submerged underneath this giant bathtub." Inspired to find a way to return the canyon to its natural state, Inge- bretsen teamed up with Dave Wegn. er, a former employee of the Bureau ofRecI8mation. Wegner, who worked for the bu. reau for 22 years" headed the Glen CanyOn Environmen.tal Studies, a project to evaluate the effect the dam was having on the ecosystem of the , Grand Canyon. The result of the study was the 1996 Grand Canyon flood, aJmed at rebullding some of the beaches in the canyon and reju. venating life that had been hurt by the cold, clear water that now flowed through it The flood was hailed as a tempo- rary success. But Wegner saw it only as a Band,Aid masking the larger problem, A year later, ~ than '" percent of ' the new beaches remained. The beaches are only a small part of the problem, though. Those push- ing to drain the lake have a whole listofreasons. Glen Canyon nmrl-was built as a savings account, intended to allow the Upper Basin states'of the rado River (Colorado, Utah, W ming and New Mexico) to the Lower Basin states (Caliti Arizona and Nevada with million acre-feet of water under the Colorado Compact A mistake in tabuialing the flow of the river made the cessity. According to its b without the dam the compact beviolated. But to people at the Sierra and Grand Canyon Institute, vlromnental coat of the dam weighs its benefits_ Lake Powell has become a bathtub, they say. Thousands power boats spill enough oil every foUr years - roughly 9 million gal, Ions - to equal that of the Exxon Valdez .catastrophe, Ingebretsen 'said. Nearly_ B percent of the water - stored ,in the reservoit' evaporates every year - more than 1 million'-: a:cre-fEiet per year- enough water to' grow another Phoenix, almost enough for a new Los Angeles. Wa- ter that could go to Colorado or Utah. The lake is also ~g up with mud andsilt. In, aiiditioh. to the -damage to the lake, the Gra1ld Canyon is beini dO' strayed. No longer is the Colorado a slow, silt laden river through the canyon, but a fast-moving mountain _ putting speclesthat devel, oped in the murky water at serious risk. AB much as Ingebretsen wants to drain the lake to restore Glen Can. yon, ,be also wants to do it in order to save,Grand Canyon. "What we're doing there is noth. ingshort'ofa crime," he said. "If we don't act now, the Grand Canyon will be iost forever.lI1l still be pretty to look at, but it will be dead." 'After the failure of the flood to provide the l1ecessary -relief to the- canyon, lngebretsen _and Wegner moved beyond trying to mitigate en- vironmental damage to the dam to looking at how to :make it irrelevant - The group, with the backing of the Sierra Club, has launched a lOng. term study of how one would go "about draining the lake. The group is presently working on what they call a "Citizens' Envi. ronmental Assessment." Informa. tion from existing reports on the dam will be gathered in order to give what they say would be a clear pic- ture of what tl]e coat of Ioeing the lake would be. The point of the _, sald inge- bretsen, is to give some credibility to their proposal. to - convince people that losing the power generated- by the dam- and the recreation of the lake will be worth. the price. The institute has had some sue. cess. By focusing on the fact that the power plant at the dam produces . only 3 percent of the electricity on !be national grid, they have helped to neutralize one of the major ec0- nomic argwnents against the proposal Barry Wirth, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, ~ that while his agency is skeptical about the idea, he concedes that at present, power ft'om the dam is not vital to tbe_ '''lhere is a surplus of power at present," be ' point on By all the data on the institute hopes to move be- proving minor points to con- - cing people to support the whole idea. To reach that goal, the institute is working with the siemi Club. , Steve Glaser, a retired business- man from Crested Butte, is heading a Sierra Club committee that is look- ing at the issue. He said by fonning the reeearch group, the SIerra Chili is taking a, different approach to isckling a big problem. "We decided that we need to get involved more in the adm1n1strative process of the issue, rather than just mounting campaigns to change leg- islation," he said. "We have to be_ systematic and patient The inertia of the status quo is significant" bretsen admits that the pro- . 't glamorous. But he' said . on tilE! envfronm the ' '$400,000 it will todoafulleco- nomic impact statement on the pr0- posal is the only way to go abl;lU.t it '~hearings were just orie little _of the plM." be saki "Our Iloal is In make PeOple.realize that lOO years froUl' now, people will Scratch their heads and ask why did we do this to one- of the most beautif\11 ----- ----------'------ placeS on earth? That's going to take time.." HoW much time? When pressed, lngebretsen runs throUgh a list Of target dates that lead to the end Of the reservoir: 15 years for the envi- ronmental impact statement to be complete; another 15-00 years for the draw down to begin; and a flnal1().20 years until the Colorado River aga1n flows freely through Glen -Canyon. Sometime _ in the next half century, ingebretaen expects people will be again floating down the quiet river. "1t1l happen, that,much rm sure 01;" be saki, "I just hope rm sttll allve to see it" Ingebret:sen may have miscalcu. lated in one place. He forgot to factor in. how much longer David Brower and Floyd'Dominy will be around to argue about the idea. _ Dominy and Brower are Symbols ofhow intense and long the struggle ~aver Lake Powell has been. The two men have been intimately involved. in the debate since the dam was first proposed back in the late 1941ls, Brower is the former executive - director of the Sien-a Club. During the 19508 and 196Os, he may have been the most powerful environ. mentalist in the country. Dominy was one of the most pow- erfulpeopw in America. As the long- time head (Jf the Bureau ofRec1ama- tion, he was instrumental in directing the agency through ita beyday of dam bullding, when the arid West was turned into an oasis. Through his tight connections to several western politicians, includ. ing Grand Juncttnn Congreasman' Wayne Aspinall, he wielded incredi- b1epowerin Washington. It is a testament to the slow- burning passion that t\1e1s the Glen Canyon Dam debate that both men, well into their 80s, are still involved in the process.' Like a couple of squal>bltng siblings, they have fought over this issue over the d""""",, Brower is the more active of the tWo. Ever since Ingebretsen and wegner first proposed draining the dam to the Sierra Club, Brower has been out front, pushing the issue . theenergyOfamanfaryounger wer, seeing Lake PoWell be an absolution of ofhisllfe, 've director of the ck when the dam was his own admission) one of the few Ie in a position to stop it. Publl , he was against the project. But board of directnrs at the Siem. Clu had made a deal with Congress: GI n Canyon Dam gets built so that 0 dams are not con- structed Dinosaur National Monument Brower with his own board. B neither be nor anyone on the had ever been-to" Glen Canyo So, as Brower said, they re- ally no idea what they were bar- .. away. It wasn't until con- . on had already begim on the dam that he finally did go to see what be now remembers as a won- derful, gentle place, "So, I just sat there oll my duff," he said. "I had the votes to kill the project and I did nothing." For 40 years, Brower lived with guilt So it was.not-surprising that when the clamor began again to drain the lake, Brower was fi'ont and center, "I had ilo choice'" he' said. "After 40 plus years, ifs time to recognize ourmistakes." As Dominy sees it, any mistakes did not come:from his end. Dominy, who is retired to a farm in Virginia not far from Washington, calls the dam a "100 percent success." Dominy is proud of his creation. Aildhis reasons aremany. Glen Canyon Dam has helped cre- ate a_liveable'environment for mil. lions_Ofpeople~il1.,a place with very little' rainfall. The regular flows com1ngout'ofthe dam allow for year round navigation d. the Grand Can- yon, som~thing previously possible only a few_ weeks out of the YElBl- Farmers m Phoenix and the'Imperi. al Valley use the water to grow their crops. Millions vacation on the lake - every year, And bald eagles and,' ospreys now have a home ~ the: Gra1ld C8nyon, thanks to the world~ class trout fishery the c1e8r, eold wal ter flowing out of the dam hal: created. But, Dominy said, his years of e:l perience have taught him that Lakt Powell will not be drained sln:lpt because it makes money. "You car: justify it economically just from tht recreational beneftts,"'hesa1d. "Pel:! ple come from all the world an' you're not going to drain the lake b long as they do. " He has a point In 1996, 2.5millif people visited the lake, pumpii $455-million into the area's econom Dominy knows that the greatest a gument for a dam is economics. Wbtle Brower has become Ilke , old prophet in his later years, telliI. people he had warned them llbo\ the lake's problems, Dominy l'l mains in his comfortable position a the bogey man Of the environmen1t movement Dominy proudly points out tl::u: President Kennedy referred In bi! as "the nation's waterboy." But he just as pleased by the animosity eJ. gendered by such people as ~ )al EdwardAbbey, "Abbey wanted to name a raPh after me once the dam was de stroyed," he said. ''Too bad it1lw er bappen."1 I In Hannon's book. though, till I ' dam is destroyed. 'Ibe end is i.mmi i I diate and calaslropl1ic. Even befor the bomb can be detonated, heav floods from a season ofE! Nifio ove whelm the structure, sending Lak, Powell rushing down the Coloract towtml the sea. The bomb is a ciriematic mud intended to ,add a bit of Tom CIan4 to the story. It is also a literarytipi the. captoAbbey, who first rfS in his book '''ll1e Monkey W Gang" that it would lake a. weapon to get rid ofthedant , i But Hannon's book isn't allapoC' .': lyptic. It ends 50 years injD the ft . 'le ture,ontheanniversaryofthedam', ' destrnction. Waddy Temeseh, thl . ':i Hopi Inman instrumental in thl '_;1 structure's demise, is foWld sittinJ; . - ~ quietly in a side canyon of the re '4::-' stored ,Glen Canyon. He is playtDg Iii _ ,~.. flute. I - " : A journalist has come to in~ '--:: ' view Temeseh, whO,is now ~Id ' :i ered a hero for bringing Glen. yon back. 'Ibe joumalist asks ~ , question and is off to see the deton&l, ,'",',~;', lion sight. Temeseh gives him~-,: tions, adding that where the dam~-, ,": used to stand is now'the best rapid{ - )~ on the whole river. ' . ,-~\' The rapids are called Floyd's Rin( _ - I! , , ------'--'-"i