Laserfiche WebLink
c t4 ? <br />In its wake, the <br />awesome Colorado <br />giver flood of 1983 <br />left troubling questions <br />about how the river <br />is managed <br />By Roger Morris <br />N LATE MAY t983, former Interior De- <br />partment Secretary lames Watt <br />traveled to the Utah-Arizona border <br />with a group of corporate execu- <br />tives and government officials to cele- <br />brate the twentieth birthday of the Glen <br />Canvon Dam on the Colorado River. <br />"\Vhat would this area be without wa- <br />ter?" asked Watt in a speech extolling <br />the wonders of federal reclamation. <br />His audience hardly had to be told. <br />Their celebration was not pimply in <br />honor of Glen Canyon Dam, northeast- <br />ern bulwark of the Colorado reservoir <br />svstem, but of the entire scheme that <br />ha.d brought one of the world's great <br />rivers under control. Downstream trom <br />the birthday party, eight more colossal <br />dams stood astride the once-wild Col- <br />orado, linchpins in an irrigation and <br />recreation system serving seven Mates <br />and an area of 300,000 square miles. <br />Near Yuma, Arizona, children play in <br />flood waters that had devastated their <br />community. The surging river displaced <br />thousands and caused more than $100 <br />million in damages. Niany observers felt <br />the catastrophe could have been avoided. <br />43 <br />it gins a