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THE BALANCING ACT the most obvious point of discussion in this area seems to be the question of decommissioning of Glen Canyon Dam. My question is: In light of the role of Lake Powell with regard to the operation of the Colorado River Compact and the Upper Basin's obligation to provide water to the Lower Basin, is it at all realistic to conclude that Glen Canyon Dam might be decommissioned one day in an effort to balance human and environment needs? I presume that Pam Hyde has a comment about that. HYDE: I don't have to go first. PALMER: Do you want me to go first? HYDE: Sure. PALMER: Actually, we're sitting together on purpose. I have an appreciation that Pam Hyde, David Wegner and Richard Ingebretsen of the Glen Canyon lnstitute prob- ably don't appreciate. I have an appreciation for the Glen Canyon Institute. I spend a good deal of time on their Web page and it is an interest- ing subject to me. As I went through under graduate and graduate school in economics, I pondered the economics of natural resources. The whole idea that you construct a dam and you've caused an irrevers- ible change is challenged by the Glen Canyon Institute. I think it's thought provoking. With respect to this issue of Glen Canyon Dam removal, the United States enjoys a certain degree of prosperity. The reason it enjoys this prosperity is because there is approximately a half a million dollars of capital for each man, woman and child in the United States that is used to produce goods. Much of that capital, which is productive capacity, is public infrastructure. Glen Canyon Dam is part of the public infrastructure and it probably contributed to the prosperity and development that there is in the western United States. The question isn't: Do you think one day you'll view the question is: Do the benefits of decommission Glen Canyon Dam? In my the dam exceed the decommissioning costs in our lifetime? SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS SEPTEMBER 1999 o - S. Clayton Palmer Once you think about Glen Canyon Dam as infrastructure, one thing about infrastructure is that it depreciates and that it becomes obsolete. So Glen Canyon Dam is a facility which, over time, will wear out its usefulness. It will someday become the Lake Powell Slough and so the question of, is it responsible to think about decommissioning the dam isn't really the question. One other thing, with respect to obsolescence. The power plant may become obsolete years before we have the Lake Powell Slough. Right now, the issue we're dealing with in electrical generation is the notion that fuel cells, or more localized generation rather than large power plants, will be the wave of the future. We may have a fuel cell in our house and that's where we'll get our electrical power. We won't have to run transmission lines across the country to get electrical power and the power plant at Glen Canyon might become obsolete. The question then isn't: Do you think one day you'll decommission Glen Canyon Dam? In my view the question is: Do the benefits of decommissioning the dam exceed the costs in our lifetime? That's the question. That's the issue. Let me take another example. Twenty-five percent of the land in Los Angeles is road or parking lot. If, in 20 years, we find that automobiles are not a good mode of transporta- tion, we have left an infrastructure for the next generation to deal with which is entirely obsolete. So these issues of obsolescence of infrastructure, I think, come up. They should come up with respect to Glen Canyon Dam and the Glen Canyon Institute does us a service us to ask us to think about those questions. OK. Now I've thought about the question and I won't give you an answer but I do think the way to approach this is to say, "What are the benefits of decommissioning? What are the costs?" HYDE: Well, the answer to the question that was posed: Is it at all realistic to conclude that the dam might be decommissioned one day in an effort to meet this balance? I think the answer is clearly, yes. It is realistic. This is potentially a solution to some of these balancing problems. That's why the Glen Canyon Institute is proposing to have the dam decommissioned and the lake drained. Clayton brings up an interesting question about balancing the benefits and the costs but I think the only problem with the way you phrase that, Clayton, is talking about it within our lifetime. The problem that got us the dam in the first place was doing some balancing benefit and cost analysis first without fully recognizing all the benefits and all the costS, and secondly only looking in the short term. We should