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;. A tale of two rivers: The desert empire and the mountain -Wt''w dom Ol/,r but cnd worst and 0 lot ofinotkntiw twerop Il10Ji in mtling thI. Ol/,r Wutt'rn plact'.. - Colorado Justice Greg Hobbs. at Bishop's Lodge 1997 -It wOuld be quitt' a nrn.ote]J't'ritxl befort' (tM UpPt'r Colorado Bruin) would 1M tkwloped - 50 or 100 or possibly 200 yean. - 0 - Delph Carpenter, testifying in 1925 on the Boulder Canyon Project Aet Bill Analvsis by George Sibley We are so easily sidetracked, I thought, when the Sierra Club fired its shot across the bow oftbe Western water establishment last November. We build big impressive systems, devel- oping ideas for transportation, communi- cations, food production, impounding water behind huge dams. what haW! you. Then, just when we are to the point . where a syriem i. in place but needs a lot of fine-tuning and maintenance, either we all get bored and forgetful, or eome faction that didn't like the system from the start lures us away, and we abandon what has been built and go charging off' after some new idea. Talte, for ~p\e, the proposal to dntin Lake Powell bel:lind Glen Canyoa Dam. It seems seriOWl enough. '!be Sierra Club is working with a Salt Lake City organization, the Glen Canyon Institute, to formulate and carry out a 8()..month citizens' study as "the first .step in the ultimate draining of Lake Powell, the restoration of Glen Canyon, and the preservation of the Grand Canyon and the Sea of Cortez estuar- ies.- In announcin, the board'a resolution lut November, Siem Club President Adam Werbach said, "It's the job of tile Sierra Club to show what being rreen really means, and it takes broad vision- uy strokes. '!bill i8 that type of stroke.. rm reminded of the old engineering school adap: -when you're up to your U8 in alliptoni, it's hard to remember that you set out to drain the swamp." Glen Canyon loomsllO large in our minds and emotions that it almoat obliterates the rest of the Colorado River, Nevertheless, it is important to remember that draininr Lake Powell is just alligator r George Sibley lives in Gunnison, Colo., where he teaches at Western State College. This is the second of two special issues on dams supported by a grant from the William C. Kenney Watershed Protection Foundation. 8 - Hfgh Country News '_ November 10. 1997 River (Arizonn, California and Nevada Some treaties - especially tht' om: that don't work - are imposed arbitra ily on a landscape and a people. The Colorado River Compact falls into a happier category. It fits the landscape, at least. like a glove. The ancestral Colorado River rose along with the "New Rockies" out fJf th slow grind and crush of the North American plateR in the Laramide Orogeny millions of years ago. Like." tht present-day streams draining the we:<t slopes of the Waaatch Mountains in Utah, the ancestral Colorado only flowed out into the basjn.and.ranJe region west of the Rockies. There H ended in a large lake much like tod3f~ Great Salt Lake somewhere in what w, call southeastern Utah and northern Arizona, blocked there by the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau - an immense uplift created by the bucklin,; of tectonic plates. In the 88me reologic time, another river - ancestor to today's Lower Colorado River - wall draining the southern slope of that uplifting platenl running through subtropical deserts down into tbe tectonic crack now C3JJe<o the Gulf of California, or Gulf of Cortii': That 80Iltbem river lJ1l(iually ate back into the plateau until, around 5.5 mil. lion yeaJ'I lip, it eroded a channel through the plateau and "'captured- th{ terminal lake containing the flow of tht Upper CoJonado River. At that point, the two rivers began the geologicallabon associated with becomin, a sin,le river &yItem by removing the convex bump of the plateau in their middle section. Today, that monumental talk is well under way, as the canyons of the Colorado Riftr attest. A masaive amount of the plateau has been reduced to debris and conveyed down to the Gulf of California. The ~erging river has cut a milt down into the plateau, while wind and water bave been taking oft' Iayen from the top and widening tht raps between the many canyons' rims. This construe tion process has been aided several times this past million years by immense glacial runof&. If this wer to continue Ion, enough, the Grand Canyon and the plateau would eventually disappear. But in recent time the river bas been modest in mze, and the ener BY with which it saws at the plateau has slowed. There's a certain amount of mea involved with such a project, and that dirt and rod: have all been moved downstream on what might best be described u a bi" seasonally erratic conveyor belt below the Plateau canyons. &. much lIB the river has done thus far, it is still accurate to describe the Colorado sa two rivers work in, diligently in a vast and desolately beautiful con. stnJt:tjon lOne to become one. There are still two river basins. The upper section is a temperate zone mountain-and-valJey river we call the Upper Basin. Tbe lower section, whicb emerges from the canyon!! of tile Colorado Plateau aad which we call the Lo.....cr Basin, is a subtropical desert river, '"an American Nile.- , :~ i , FOR POSlERnY: Water company directors and a construction superintendent pose at Boulder (now Hoover) Dam in 1934 (Photo courtesy The Bancroft Ubfary. University of California, Betkeley) mitigation - an attempt to deal with a bunch ofrel- alively small problems. It may be a good idea. and it may be a way of switching one perceived mess for another m.. while inc:reaaing the cultural metion that generates memberships. Whether the draining happens or not. it should not be done all in a rush, out of revenge or out of an attempt to solve problems that loom large to us because we aren't thiDking about the lazpr ones behind them. We should start by recognizing the GleD Canyon Dam is a physical manifestation of an historie agreement - the Colorado River Compact- among the seven statei that make up the Colorado River Basin. . Finally, we should not assume that the compact that gave ri8e to Glen Canyon Dam is necenarily in conflict with wbat many ofus see as the hopeful, progressive ideas that Cl')'Stallized in the 1960s, just as the water wsa risiDJ behind the dam. Before we go tearin, away at the dam and the compect, we eould look at their roots. We may still decide to demolisb both, but at least then we will know wbat we are doing, and not be surprised by the conse- quences of our aet. Tlte ....pocl defined In November 1922, npresentatives from seven Western states met at a resort called Bishop's Lodge near Santa Fe to complete an interstate treaty deter- mining how the waters of the ColoJ'ado River Baain would be divided amollog those states. Tbe Colorado River Compact divided the water by splitting the_ river. It gave half of the river and half of the water to the four states along the Upper Colorado River (Colorado, Nn. Mexico, Utah and Wyoming), and half to the three statei along the Lower Colorado >- .."'t ;0' , Here ...... everybody That was the situation when a swarming population of Europeans invaded the region sunounding the CoJorado. They were not the first humans in the Western reaches of the tmt:inent. but.they came in unprecedented numbers - and. with culture, custom ant continued on page It.