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

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Page 6 of 6 "The reality is that it (Lake Powell) will refill: It has to refill," Wirth said. "We have no other way to prepare for the next drought that's going to come." In Page, chamber director Nevills - Staveley has some sympathy for those who would like to see the canyons resurrected. She's the oldest daughter of Norm Nevills, who in the 1930s launched one of the first commercial rafting businesses on the Colorado River and helped give birth to what has become a major recreational industry. His pioneering 1938 excursion through Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon, at a time when fewer than 100 people had managed the feat, drew nationwide press attention and made him famous. Before his death in a 1949 plane crash, Nevills led many commercial trips through Glen Canyon, and his daughter remembers it well and fondly. However, she believes that even if Lake Powell were drained, the wild, lonely, and beautiful canyon she remembers exploring in the days before the dam is unlikely to return to its natural state — certainly not in her lifetime, nor in the lifetime of anyone now living. Besides, she said, the lives of too many people in Page and on the neighboring Navajo Reservation have, for better or worse, become inextricably tied to the reservoir in the past 40 years. "You can't go back," she said. While the pro -dam and antidam forces marshal their arguments, battling for the hearts, minds, and perhaps the soul of the West, a third participant in the debate — nature — likely will have the final say. If rain and snowfall return to average in the Colorado River watershed, it will take at least a dozen years to refill Lake Powell, Wirth said. If the drought continues and the reservoir keeps dropping at its curent pace, in as little as two years the water in Lake Powell will drop below the turbine intakes and Glen Canyon Dam's massive generators will shut down. A journalist for more than 20 years, John Krist is a senior reporter and columnist at the Ventura County Star in Southern California and a contributing editor for California Planning & Development Report. His weekly commentaries on the environment are distributed nationally by Scripps Howard News Service, and he is a regular contributor to Writers on the Range, a syndicated service of High Country News, which distributes commentaries to more than 70 newspapers in the West. Send comments to feedback enn.com. Related Links Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Glen Canyon Institute Page -Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Unger Colorado River Region Natural Resource Conservation Service's National Water and Climate Center National Weather Service Cimate Prediction Center NOAA Paleoclimatolo y Program U.S. Drought Monitor Source: John Krist 8/27/2004