7287

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7287
• Author: Morris, R.
• Title: It Was a Dam Disaster
• USFW Year: n.d.
• USFW - Doc Type: In Its Wake, the Awesome Colorado River Flood of 1983 Left Troubling Questions about How the River Is Managed
• Copyright Material: YES

sibility for flood control and, ostensibly,
for warning of the dangers of settlement
in the capricious Colorado floodplain
along the Arizona-California border.
Unfortunateily, a bureau campaign to
caution riverfront settlers about possi-
ble flooding in a series of public meet-
ings in 1977 evaporated in the beguiling
years of drought that followed, Corps
warning campaigns in 1979 and 1981
were also unsustained.
Meanwhile, as government's right
hand waved an occasional warning, its
left beckoned settlers onto the river. A
1964 Department of Interior land-use
plan called for "a wide range of public
facilities to meet present and future rec-
reation needs" along the Colorado's
banks. Soon afterward, the depart-
ment's Bureau of Land Management
IBLM) drew up its own "°recreation
and management plan" for the federal
riverfront property in both Arizona and
California.
State and county officials in Califor-
nia and Arizona might have stemmed
the tide of development. But counties
that held up permits found settlers
building anyway in the federally en-
couraged riverfront boom. And state
governments that bewailed federal neg-
ligence after the 1983 flood had earlier
welcomed tax revenues that came with
new riverfront development. Moreover,
from county courthouse to state capitol,
there was no practical, working liaison
with the federal agencies that controlled
the river and, thus, the region's destiny.
Ever since the 1930s, the Bureau of
Reclamation has been pressed to bal-
ance the original flood-control purpose
of the Colorado River dams with the
burgeoning demands for water that was
needed for irrigation, human suste-
nance and electric-power production.
That demand for hydroelectricity
throughout Southern California and the
Southwest grew ineluctably in the wake
of the first Arab oil embargo in the early
1970s.
A Bureau of Reclamation study at the
time called specifically for more power
production from the river. Then, in
1977, the crucial bureau office that
oversaw releases from the Colorado
dams was taken over by the newly
created Department of Energy. Reborn
as the Western Area Power Administra-
tion, the old bureau office was trans-
formed from what had been primarily a
water authority to an aggressive hydro-
electric power broker. That notion was
reinforced in the early 1980s by admin-
istration policy makers, who considered
rising utilities revenues from the Col-
orado dams as a potentially lucrative
weapon in the battle to control the
mounting federal deficit.
None of these changes, bureau
spokesmen insisted after the 1983 dis-
aster, meant that reservoir space was
occupied for power generation at the
expense of legally required flood-
control capacity. Yet a 1968 change in
bureau regulations had halved flood-
control margins from what they were in
the 1930s. Sources in and out of gov-
ernment agree that from the late 1970s,
there has been a steady filling of the
Colorado ;River reservoirs. «ater levels
have been kept relatively higher by U.S.
officials to ensure consistent power
production.
As early as November 1982. Arizo-
na's Director of Water Resources had
been notified by federal authorities of
the "possibility of flooding" along the
Colorado during the coming spring, and
that dam releases would be increased.
National Park Service officials were ap-
parently given similar notices. Yet there
is no record that the warning was passed
to local authorities along the river, or to
homeowners and businesses situated
there.
Announced or not, the flood would
come. Moreover, the following
chronology-based on internal doc-
uments of the Bureau of Reclamation,
and on eyewitness accounts and pub-
45