BOARD02646 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

~tn'Canyon Dam {Bureau of Reclamation photo by A rising wave Ingebretsen suddenly found himself rid- ing a,wave. Calls came in from around the country: college professors wanting to debate the move in their classrooms; students, river runners and desert rats wanting to get involved. Within a year, Ingebreben dropped his medical practice to focus on the institute. "I must have pushed the right buttoll at the right time," he says. .Sometimes you just need someone to hold the parties. 'That's wbat rve done, I've just reserved the room and ordered the cookies. ~ But not everyone wanted to attend the parties. This September, Western lawmakers held congressional hearings to drown the idea. Sierra Club president Adam Werbach and the institute's David Wegner Rot a beat- ing from politidans and experts who dis- missed the plan as "loony," "impractical" and "certifiably nutty~ (HeN, 10113197). The hearings may have backfired. The Arizona Daily Sun editorialized, "Draining the lake is no laughing matter ... (The Glen Canyon Institute and the Sierra Club) are neither scientific nor public relations Iight- weights.~ The San Diego Union ran an opin_ ion piece arguing that draining Lake Powell could save almost a million acre:-feet of water each year that is lost to evaporation and seepage into the ground. A week after tbe hearing, the Nel/) York 7!mes published an opinion piece by Dan Beard, former head of BuRee, praising the proposal as "breathtaking," and something worthy of consideration. '"The dam-building era in the United States is over," he told a crowd at the Glen Canyon Institute's third annual meeting in . October.-Beard, who now works for the National Audubon Society, compared dams to nuclear power plants: They provide imme- diate, Mclean" benefits, but carry huge costs over tbe long baul. . MAdam can leave a legacy of environ- mental destruction that'will take hundreds of years to correct,. he said. "Why not spend (the minions of dollars we're already putting into mitigation for the Glen Canyon Dam) 011 restoring the canyon'r It's a good 'question; says David Wegner, an ecologist, who spent 22 years with the BuRee. Beginning in 1982, Wegner headed the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies, a massive study on the effects of the dam on ,< the Grand Canyon ecosyStem. His findings led the Bureau to flood the Grand Canyon in tbe spring of 1996 to wash sediment out of the river and rejuvenate the beaches (HeN, 7122196). For the first time at Glen Canyon, the Bureau, had taken the environment into account, rather than catering to power users. But the ~Flood of '96~ was only a Band-Aid, says Wegner. Within a year, more than 80 perrent of the new beaches had washed back into the river. "It was' not a panacea. It was not a long- term solution. We knew that all along," he 68)'S. "If you want to restore the Grand Canyon ecosystem, removing the dam is the only long-term solution.M Not surprisingly, the BuRec: shied away from Wegner's ideas. Soon after the flood, it closed the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies office and offered Wegner a job else- where. "It was an insult," says Wegner. "It wasn't science. It wasn't wbat I was interest. ed in." So he left: and joined Richard Ingebretsen in hopes of pushing the Bunau one step further from the outside. IfInge~ "reserves the room and orders the cookies," Wegner is the life of the party. Driven and eloquent, Wegner says there is a "windcw ofopportunity," in which Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon can be saved. Endangered fish such as the razorback sucker and humpback chub still survive in river tributaries and murky backwaters. If we restore the Colorado River, these fish may recover, he says, but jfwe do nothing, "20 years from now, they may not still be here." The same is true for other creatures such as the endangered southwest willow flycatcher and leopard frog. As for Lake Powell, says Wegner, ~it has_ n't become a toxic wasteland yet," but over time, it may. Glen Canyon will never be restored to its original state, he says, but much of the river system can still be sal- vaged. To make their vision a reality, Wegner and Ingebretsen want to do the job the BuRee never did: take B close look at the environmental costs of the Glen Canyon Dam. Their tool is a "Citi~ens' Environmental Assessment," modeled after the studies that agencies put together under the National Environmental Policy Act. Over the next few years, tb~ institute will pull together existing studies and information on Glen Canyon, put them into a report and take it to the public for review. "If the public says 'we're happy with what we've got,' well, that's an answer," says Wegner. "But at least it's based on public input and scientific information and not based on what a eouple of politicians back in Washington thought up" He hopes the Citizens' EA will prompt the BuRee to do a more extensive environmental impact state- ment, and to consider draining the lake. So far, neither the BuRee nor the Clinton administration has shown any sign of budging on the issue. Elliot Diringer, a spokesman for the President's Council on Environmental Quality, is skeptical of the institute's approach. ~It may be a way to muster support for their cause,~ he says, -but I know of no legal basis for this sort of EA leading to any action." Wegner acknowledges that the institute is up against an otten immovable Bureau, multimillion-dollar tourist and power indus- tries and a century of accumulated water law, but he is still ho~ful. The flood of 1996 demonstrated that the BuRee can change. Tourists can, too; they can turn from floating the lake to running the river and hiking in the canyons. Likewise, the demand for electricity can be satiated through coal power, alternative energy sources and conservation: Finally, he sa,., if the public: decides to drain Powell, the linebpin of the . , Colorado River Compact, the laws will have to change to accommodate it. "Nobody is going to go up to Lake Powell llDd pull the plug on it tomOlTOW,~ says Wegner. "'This is going to take time to do it right. All we're doing is starting the debate. ~ The end or a desert lake! On Lake Powell, hordes of boaters flock to the Wahweap Marina for the long Utah Education Association weekend. 'The scene resembles a Yacht club on San Francisco Bay more than the Utah desert. Folks loaf alon~ the docks slathered in sunscreen and fuel up their houseboats and jet-skis. A pack of kids chases a football. Many here haven't heard about the push to drain the lake, but those who have take the idea very seriously. "It would be a travesty,~ says one man who has been coming bere for 20 years. "A lot of people enjoy this lake. "'The trouble with that is, you get enough people 'talking about it, and some day they just might do it.~ . ~,\f , ~ tit "Glen Canyon was a peaceful.. . and protective place. The more you got to know it, tile more YOlt fell in love with it.." - Katie Lee e BECOMING A TOXIC WASTElAND? More than 2 million people visit lake Powell each year (Greg Hanscom photo) e High Country News - Nuv('iIllx'r 10. IH97 - II