Drought Boosts Campaign to Drain One of the West's Biggest Reservoirs

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Miller, Steve From: Loretta Lohman [lorettalohman @comcast.net] Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 8:15 AM To: John Shields; Miller, Steve; Dave Merritt; Reagan Waskom; Laurie Fisher Subject: Lake Powell, ENN Drought boosts campaign to drain one of the West's biggest reservoirs Friday, August 27, 2004 By John Krist Past these towering monuments, past these mounded billows of orange sandstone, past these oak -set glens, past these fern- decked alcoves, past these mural curves, we glide hour after hour, stopping now and then as our attention is arrested by some new wonder. — John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons PAGE, Arizona — Maintenance workers at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area are playing tag with Lake Powell. Each time they think they have it cornered, it slips away again. The worst drought in the recorded history of the western United States has shrunk the lake behind Glen Canyon Dam to its lowest point in more than 30 years, leaving a 117 -foot- high bathtub ring of white mineral deposits on the ruddy shoreline cliffs. To keep pace with the reservoir's steadily receding shoreline, the National Park Service has poured hundreds of cubic yards of concrete to extend marina boat - launch ramps twice in the past two years. Page 1 of 6 Resting on the dry lake bed, channel markers indicate the former location of Hite Marina at the upstream end of Lake Powell. Severe drought throughout the West has dropped the lake level 117 feet and brought renewed calls to drain the reservoir permanently. At Wahweap, the lake's most heavily used marina, the ramp is now about 1,300 feet long, according to Park Service spokeswoman Char Obergh. It is a vertigo- inducing slab of monumentally proportioned pavement and would seem a strong contender for the title of Longest and Steepest Boat Ramp in North America if not for the fact that another ramp at Lake Powell, the one at Bullfrog Marina, has been extended to 1,568 feet — nearly one -third of a mile. Elsewhere at the lake, the Park Service has admitted defeat. Near the upstream end of the 186 -mile -long reservoir, crews packed up Hite Marina last winter and hauled it away. Storage in Lake Powell has fallen to 42 percent of capacity, the lowest level since it was first filled, and a weedy landscape of fissured mud fills the canyon where Hite's docks once floated on sparkling water. The record - setting drought, now in its sixth year in some parts of the West, has done more than inconvenience boaters at Lake Powell, the nation's second - largest artificial reservoir. It has thrown a scare into water managers in several states, asking them to confront the possibility that the explosive urban growth of the past 20 years in the region rests upon a hydrological mirage. It is beginning to drive farmers and ranchers off the land in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. It threatens power shortages and price spikes this summer in California, as anemic flows curtail hydroelectricity generation in the Pacific Northwest. The drought also has begun resurrecting the labyrinthine canyon system drowned nearly four decades ago by the rising waters of Lake Powell, revealing to a new generation of westerners the environmental cost of their water and power. And by doing that, the drought has reinvigorated a quixotic campaign to decommission the last of America's high dams and to 8/27/2004