Free The Colorado River
John is equal parts gentle humility and fearless advocate.
A landmark battle is playing out against the timeless
flow of the Colorado River. The confrontation revolves around Glen Canyon
Dam and a radical plan that may offer the only chance for a sustainable
future for the Colorado River.
At the forefront of this plan is Colorado Riverkeeper John Weisheit, who
is calling for the decommissioning of an American icon, Glen Canyon Dam.
Never has a dam the size of Glen Canyon been decommissioned and demolished
in the U.S. or anywhere else. He is also advocating the reform of how the
federal government manages the Colorado River. Few are behind him; many
against. Still, he marches (and paddles) forward.
I had the opportunity to join John, his wife Susette, warrior queen-of-the-river,
and five close friends for a nine-day paddle down the Green River, a major
tributary to the Colorado. We navigated 50 rapids and camped along the
canyon shores on sandy beaches. We piled all of our supplies, including
tents, food and water, onto three rafts and two kayaks. As we made our
way down the meandering river, wild horses, bighorn sheep and great blue
herons reminded us that we were in indeed in one of the most remote places
in the lower 48 states.
Sharing a raft with John we discussed the network of dams that harness
the Colorado River and its tributaries and the consequences of such large-scale ‘marvels’ of
engineering. “They should have never been built,” he says. “They
created many more problems than they solved.”
Over millions of years the muddy Colorado River has patiently gouged deep
winding corridors through soft sandstone. Ancient peoples built stone houses
in valley clefts and crags. Then came the era of the dam and the American
West would never be the same. In the early 1960s in an isolated spot on
the Utah-Arizona border, the nation’s burgeoning environmental movement
engaged in fierce battle to stop construction of several dams along the
Colorado River.
In the end, four of the largest dams were never built. But Glen Canyon
Dam, located in southeastern Utah, was completed in 1963. Five million
yards of concrete were poured nonstop at the dam site, and upon completion,
the total height of the dam stood at 710 feet.
Over the next 20 years, water backed up for 186 miles along
the Green River, inundating Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of side canyons
in Arizona and Utah, destroying some of the most beautiful riverine vistas
in the country. The now-flooded Glen Canyon is often called the Lost Eden,
largely because the side canyons with their deep shade and sculptured grottoes
were historically the ecological pump for much of the life in the Grand
Canyon, 15 miles below Glen Canyon Dam, and beyond. Glen Canyon Dam created
one of the world’s largest man-made bodies of water, Lake Powell,
drowning a thousand years of human history and a million years of natural
history.
John tells me that Lake Powell is slowly but surely filling with the
sediment. While the reservoir won’t entirely fill with sediment for 500 to
700 years, significant storage capacity losses and safety problems will
force the decommissioning of the dam after 200 years. Congress, John explains,
knew this when they approved the dam, but didn’t anticipate any
solution.
The accumulating sediment is not the only problem with the dam. “Lake
Powell is also drying up,” explains John. “It’s not a
drought that’s draining Lake Powell, it’s increasing demand
for river water.” The Colorado River is already over-allocated to
downstream users and demand continues to grow as the population in the
region continues to explode. Yet federal and state water managers continue
to ignore the threat of major water shortage. “They essentially pray
for rain, as did their predecessors 125 years ago,” explains John. “Fundamentally,
nothing has changed.”
“The whole civilization out West is built on a false paradise,” John
warns. “It is not a matter of if, but when, the Colorado River plumbing
system will collapse.” When it does, water supply and power generation
for metropolitan areas from Los Angeles to Denver will be affected, as
well as the region’s multi-billion dollar agricultural industry.
The 60 million acre-feet of water in the reservoir provides a cushion
in times of average river flows, but this reserve would vanish in a sustained
drought.
The Colorado Riverkeeper and Living Rivers, its parent organization, are
demanding that the federal government respond to this crisis and commence
a dialogue with the Colorado River basin states (Arizona, California, Colorado,
Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and Mexico to revise the outdated
1922 formula for allocating water. Known as the Colorado River Compact,
this flawed agreement gives away more water on paper than the river historically
delivers. They are calling for the development of a long-term sediment
management plan that will restore the natural flow of sediment and sand
down the river to restore habitat for native species.
And finally, take down Glen Canyon Dam. Reservoirs suffer tremendous evaporation
loss in the hot arid southwest. John takes the stance that it would be
more efficient to eliminate Glen Canyon Dam from the system and utilize
Hoover Dam and adjacent underground storage to capture the limited amounts
of surplus water.
For John, rowing down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon from
Glen Canyon Dam is akin to a funeral launch. John admits to crying on
the river. He tells me it is hard for him to go down the Grand because “the
river is dead.” The Colorado River, once filled with life-sustaining
sediment and silt, has been permanently altered by construction of Glen
Canyon Dam, and now runs with cold clear water instead of the naturally
nutrient-rich and life-sustaining turbid waters that once naturally flowed
through Grand Canyon. This change has eroded riverbanks, impacted animals
and vegetation, and resulted in the extinction of five species of fish
in the Grand Canyon.
The Colorado Riverkeeper
John was raised in Los Angeles. He learned to love the Colorado River
during his summers vacationing there with his family. Later, he moved
to Moab, where he has lived for the past 20 years. He chose Moab because
he wanted to be above Glen Canyon Dam, where the river is still lithe
with sediment, still vital and alive. John started rafting the river
in 1980. In 1985 he says he was accepted by the river running community
and in 1987 he began taking people down the river. “I was not an
activist, I was a river guide. Then I became an activist.”
John maintains a complicated and sometimes contentious relationship with
the river guides on the Colorado River who make their living taking adventurers
on trips timed to take advantage of the dam’s releases for good whitewater.
John is disappointed that he does not get more support from the river guide
community. He says that at first they seemed to support his fight, but
later they distanced themselves from John’s battle. John explains
his priorities, “The river must come first; not the outfitters,
not the guides, not even my friends. Our power comes from the river.”
“Too many guides refuse to put the river first,” he grumbles. “Their
job and their relationship with the outfitters who support them are more
important to them than the river itself. We can’t betray the needs
of the river.”
The failure to save Glen Canyon from inundation in the 1960s was deeply
felt by many at the time, including environmentalist David R. Brower — who
was instrumental in preventing the building of a dam in the Grand Canyon.
Brower called the death of Glen Canyon the greatest disappointment of
his life, and he spent the rest of his life attempting to undo the mistake.
Brower co-founded Living Rivers and advocated fiercely for the draining
Lake Powell until he died in November 2000.
John recalls a conversation with Brower which he now considers the turning
point in his life. John told Brower he was disappointed that Brower did not
do more to stop the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. David admitted it was
worst mistake of his life, but it made him who he is today. Then Brower asked
John: “What
are you going to do about it, John?” John promised himself he would drive
a national environmental campaign to decommission Glen Canyon Dam and fight
for the Colorado River. John became the Colorado Riverkeeper in October 2002.
John seems unassuming to those who pass him by and don’t take the time
to get to know him. He can be described as humble, pensive, quiet, soft-spoken
and composed. He is deliberate in his choice of words as he speaks, and has
a sarcastic and dry sense of humor. He frequently chuckles quietly to himself
as if enjoying own private joke. John is equal parts gentle humility and fearless
advocate.
“John reads the river,” Susette says as she artfully but powerfully
presses her paddles through the sediment-thick Green River. One night as our
group sat around the campfire on the riverbank under a clear sky, Peter Neils
took a break from playing his guitar to tell me, “John is a legendary boatman
on this river.” Peter explained that he is inspired by John’s exceptionally
expansive and comprehensive understanding of the Colorado River — its
history, geology and its life-force. He turns back to his guitar to sing a
song by Bill Oliver:
Let’s take out a couple of dams,
the Hetch Hetchy and the Glen,
Let’s act like we know what we didn’t know then,
And take out a couple of dams.
John believes Glen Canyon Dam is an American icon, a tribute representing the
worst in human engineering, of manipulation of nature. John tells me that no
matter what it takes, he will stand up and defend the river. “I just did
not realize that standing up for the river would break my heart,” he explains
later as we paddle down the beautiful Green River. “But like Brower I
will never abandon this river, not till the day I die.”
BREAKING NEWS
Dam Agency to Study Impacts
on Endangered Species
The federal Bureau of Reclamation has agreed to study
the impacts of Glen Canyon Dam on the endangered fish population after
Colorado Riverkeeper and others charged the Bureau with violating federal
law. This is a landmark achievement.
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam destroyed the Colorado River’s
warm-water ecosystem. Non-native fish species now dominate the Grand Canyon
corridor. Native fish species such as Humpback Chub, Bonytail Chub, Razorback
Sucker and Colorado Pikeminnow are all endangered. Other important species,
including otters and muskrats, are also threatened or endangered.
“The hope is that the Humpback Chub can be rescued from imminent extinction
and that the ongoing destruction caused by the current operations of Glen
Canyon Dam on the Grand Canyon and Colorado River will be stopped,” says
Colorado Riverkeeper John Weisheit. “It is past time for a new assessment
on the dam’s operations.”
Colorado
Riverkeeper John Weisheit