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Nature demands her share coming," said Weisheit, dressed in faded jeans, a T -shirt and a "Colorado centrifuges used for Riverkeeper" cap. His car is littered with books and colorful folders of uranium enrichment literature about the Grand Canyon and how it has suffered because of the - Veteran actor dam. charged in shooting death of bar patron "Lake Powell is draining, and we might as well get used to it," he said. "This • Foreign strippers is the way it's going to be. We need to find ways to live without the lake, must supply nude Photos to officials because our bad water management practices are killing the Grand Canyon. Boy who divorced We don't need Glen Canyon Dam. We never did." murderer father wants to make it Just about every Western water agency and even other environmental easier for others groups dispute Weisheit's claim. They insist that there are plans to help restore the Grand Canyon and that without Powell, this drought would have . More breaking plunged the West into chaos. news >> What is undeniable is that the Glen Canyon Dam changed the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon in a way that has made them less hospitable for native species. The debate over those changes has helped frame the broader discussion of how to develop the West's water resources without destroying natural habitat. Urged on by conservation groups, an increasing number of government agencies and courts say the environment should be considered a water user, like a city or a state, and among their solutions is reducing the number of dams. Lake Powell's role From his office at the Carl Hayden Visitors Center, Ken Rice commands one of the best views anywhere of the Glen Canyon Dam. A wide window takes in both the downriver side of the dam and a slice of Lake Powell. Rice, who manages operations at the dam for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, admits the sight can be distracting. The lake's low level is obvious from up here. But Rice said he doesn't see failure, even though the bureau's own hydrologists suggest Powell could become so low in as soon as four years that the dam may not be able to release any water downstream. "It's doing exactly what it was designed to do," he said. "You take us out of the equation and (Lake) Mead would be way down, maybe even too far down to generate power." Lake Powell was built primarily to store water on behalf of the upper -basin river states, which are required to deliver a minimum amount of water each year to the lower -basin states. In a typical year, the Colorado River would replace the water released to the downriver states from Powell. In a drought year, the lake level falls. Five consecutive dry years have lowered Powell by more than 100 feet. At least two sets of scientists have run models of the drought- impaired river without Powell in the system. Both concluded the lake is critical to the West's survival. One study said Lake Mead would have fallen to about 9 percent of its capacity by now, which would cut off Las Vegas from 90 percent of its water. Hydrologists for the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water from Phoenix to Tucson, also ran models on a Powell -less West. To start, there would have been no CAP, which was approved in part because Powell was adding new storage. Over 40 years, the time span since the dam was completed, at least 45 million acre -feet of water, a 100 -year supply for nearly 2 million people, would have flowed unused into the Gulf of California. And without Powell, Lake Mead would have fallen low enough to produce West -wide shortages in 2002, according to the model. That's not reason enough for Weisheit and groups like his and the Glen Canyon Institute. They cite figures about how much water from Powell is lost each year to evaporation and show evidence that government efforts to restore the downstream ecosystem have failed. Page 2 of 5 http:// www. azcentral .comispecialslspecia1061 articles /0722colorado- environment.html 7/27/2004