BOARD02646

• Board Meeting Date: 1/12/1998
• Description: WSP Section - Colorado River Issues - Articles Regarding Draining of Lake Powell
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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THE NEWWESTI by Karl HessJr.

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Toppling Glen Canyon Dam would be fittihg en

PULUNG the plug on Glen
Canyon Dam and draining
Lake PoweU is an imprac-
dcal. outlandish and unreason.
able idea. And I love it.
Supporters of die idea - led
by the Glen Canyon Institute
and the. Sierra Oub - argue the
dam is wasteful. It wastes water
(by surface evaporation), it
wastes federal doU;u-s (by subsi-
dies), it wastes species (by
degrading water habitat) and it
wastes scenery (by drowning
jt)_And being a monumental
waste, supporters want to leave
it, when drained, standing high
and dry as a monument to
human foUy. Waste, yes; folly, yes;
but let it stand? No!
Glen Canyon Dam is already a
monument, and there's the rub.
It's a monument to the era of
big, costly government, and to
the hideous notion that the role
of the state is to master both
people and nature behind
Ber\in-like walls. That is what
Glen Canyon Dam stands for
and why its 5 million cubic
yards of cement, towering 700
feet above the Colorado River,
should not be left standing.
I'uttlng the wrecking b3\\ to
Glen Canyon Dam would, sym-
bolically, put the kibosh on a
century of bad ideas in the
American West. It's no accident
that the lake formed by Glen
Canyon Dam is named after
John Wesley Powell, explorer of
the Colorado River, founder of
the U.S. Geological Survey, hero
of Wallace Stegner and Broce
Babbitt, and prophet of a green-
erWest.

8 NOVEMBER 30, 1997 -The /JemIer Post

'"

PoweU saw a
West that one
day would be "
"'-~\e..;l
covered with. ; .,.:~{~:
" tal t tC~~ ,
crys wa ers,t. .' T'...~Si,;}j'-
greenfiel~ ".". .....'''~.':)f.
and bloommg ,!{., ,;s-~
gardens" - au . \
because of the power and
promise of dams. "Conquered
rivers; he touted, "are better set.
vants than wild clouds." PoweU
was not kidding. At the 1889
Montana constitutional conven-
tion he adwcated damming
every river in Montana so Dot
one drop of water would
escape the state or the grasp of
irrigators. He even called for
clear-<:utting the forests of the '.
West to stop the Waste of water
by trees.
Powell was obsessed with
waste, and in the name of stop-
ping Waste he pushed for feder-
al control and conservation of
public lands. His ideas helped'
spark the Forest Service, the
agency that gave us below-cost
timber sales; the Bureau of Land
Management, the agency that
gave us a grazing program now
costing taXpayers $250 million a
year; and the Bureau of
Reclamation, the agency that
gave us what Man: Reisner calis
the "Cadillac Desert."
Dismantling Glen Canyon
Dam would yield a fitting tomb-
stone to a century of top-down,
centraJJzed federal management
of the public land West.lt
would symbolize the passing Of
an era of unquestioned faith in
government and its good works.
Tearing down Glen Canyon

Dam would send a clear mes-
sage to the people of the West
that the region's future need
not lie in federal hands and
handouts. Over the past 100
years, federal doUars have built
the West. Federal dollars built
the dams that turned the central
desert vilIIeys of California and
Arizona into vegetable gardens.
Federal dollars built the massive
research and weapons facilities
that spurred urban growth in
places like New Mexico. And
federal dollars built the infra.
sttuctun:s of ranching and tim-
bering that now fuel the range
wars between greens and ranch-
ers and loggers.
TlIDes are changing. The feder.
al government'is too broke to
lavish more cash on the West.
Moreover, the West is comirig of
age. For the first time, a key
western state like ColOrado is
paying more per capita in feder-
al taXes than it is receiving in .
federal transfer payments. Ui1k
that turnabout to a bulldozed
Glen Canyon Dam, and one has
a glimpse of a more responsible
and more independent WesL
Monkey-wrenching Glen
Canyon Dam, if done at the
grassroots, Western level, could
also advance the prospects of
sovereignty in the WesL
Although the Sierra Oub is
national in its scope, and out-
spoken in its opposition to local
control of public: resources, the
instigator of the darn.s undoing
- the Glen Canyon Iristitute - is
grassroots and Western to the .
. core. Moreover, the inStitUte's
leadership is shunning federal .

rules in favor of its own
"<;:itaens Environmental
Assessment".to assess the
impact of tearing down the dam
- a ~ttom-up move pooh-
poohed by the top-down
Clinton administration.
It is precisely this kind of non-
federal, citizen initiative dtat
promises to the West a growing
say in itS own future. Local
action reminds us that good
things can happen close to
home, even without the federal
purse and even witham the wis-
dom of government eltperts.
And it tells US that if Glen
Canyon Dam, and au that it
stands for, is to topple, it will .
only be because the penPI~
the West - not of the natio
will have made up their min
to do iL
I can see entrepreneurs and
latter~ EdwarrlAbbeys,chip-
ping away at the dam with C4
and pickaxes, and I can see ven.
dors selling certified chunks at
$ 10 a shot. J'U buy a dozen. Who
knows, we might turn Glen
'Canyon Dam into the second
most lucrative demoUtionp~
ject in history, after the Berlin
Wall, that is.
We will lose a fme lake and an
even tiner motor-boatway. But
we will, by doing the impracti.
cal,outIandish, and unreason-
able, recapture a prized part of
our Western heritage and
reclaim a vital part of our
Western citizenship.a
Karl Hess Jr. Is an ecologist
and etWtronme"tal writer. Uv-
tng In Boulder. He 'can lie
reached at Iohess41iaoL