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I CLOUDS OVER RAINBOW BRIDGE , days Lake Powell In Rainbow Bridge ment. Whether this is , good or bad, is a boiling controversy By ZEKE SCHER t RAINBOW BRIDGE, the greatest natural wonder of southern Utah's fabulous Glen Canyon National Recrea- tion Area, towered 309 feet straight overhead, its broad, symmetrical span extending 278 feet from base to base. Those statistics, impressive as they are, fail to convey the-- magnitude of the arch. Biggest in the world, they'll tell you. You can fit the U.S. Capitol inside it. That doesn't do it either. I leaned way back to absorb its majesty. The underside was a clean reddish-brown Navajo sandstone. Variegated brown and black tapestry-the so-called desert varnish-curved in verti- cal streaks along both sides of the arch like grasping fingers. The arch stood massive, seem- ingly impregnable, impassive as the ages. I had been led to believe Rainbow Bridge was more like a cookie on the verge of crum- bling. And therein was the pur- pose of Empire's visit. Glen Canyon Dam at Page, in Arizona just below the Utah line, has been backing the Colorado River up and out of its deep and narrow canyon walls since 1964 to fOfm the incredible reser- voir-the biggest man-made lake in the world-that bears the name of John Wesley Powell, the T.... Deliver Pott . Moy 16. 1971 Illinois teacher and explorer who went on to become the father of Western reclamation. A 7l0.foot high dam was con- structed to form the reservoir. When full, Lake Powell will have a surface elevation of 3,700 feet above sea level. At that time the lake will back up water for 186 miles, providing 1,900 miles of shoreline and a reservoir area of 161,390 acres on and above the Arizona-Utah border. It takes a long time to fill a reservoir of these proportions. In recent days the water level final. ly passed the 3,600-foot mark, As the spring runoff increases, the level for the first time will reach a "critical" point: 3,606 feet. At that point the lake water, reaching deeper and deeper into a once-isolated canyon, will en. croach on the boundary of Rain- bow Bridge National Monument. This is what the controversy is all about. It's a 55-mile boat ride through gorgeous, inundated canyon- lands from Wahweep Marina, near the dam, to Forbidding Canyon where a right turn and then a left into Bridge Canyon brings you to _ a long, narrow dock. From there a one-mile dirt trail through typical desert can- yons takes you to Rainbow Bridge. Certain basic issues in the__ controversy are undisputed. They include: -At the present 3,600-foot level, Lake Powell stores 14.7 million acre-feet of water. At 3,700 feet, the capacity nearly doubles, to 27 million acre.feet. -Glen Canyon Dam is the key reservoir in the Colorado River Storage Project and the future of water use in the upper states- Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico-depends on full storage in Lake Powell. . -Rainbow""~Bridge National Monument covers a l60-acre- square tract with the great arch in the center. The tract has an - The foundations of the Rainbow Bridge are substantial. One end arises from a massive cliff. The other end of the span rests on a broad platform of solid rock. This view looks to north. ""\- 33 .""i