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OCR for page 38
3
Historical Context for Long-Term
Management of Glen Canyon Dam
The federal government agencies with a stake in the operation of Glen
Canyon Dam and the Colorado River states have concentrated on two related
questions: How should the dam be managed, and how should the impact of
its operations be monitored? These questions cannot be answered, however,
until a third question is raised and answered: For what objectives should the
dam be managed? This question was never clearly addressed by the Glen
Canyon Environmental Studies (GCES) or by the dam's managers or other
interested parties. The environmental impact statement (EIS) on the op-
eration of Glen Canyon Dam (BOR, 1995) suggests that the dam should
operate in a way that minimizes adverse effects on endangered species,
recreation, and cultural resources to the extent that this can be done without
substantially modi~ing the traditional operating priorities for the dam.
The Law of the River is the legal accretion of juclicial, legislative, and
compact resolutions of historic conflicts among diverse user groups (NRC,
1991~. Mitigation is a logical counterpart to the Law of the River, but it is too
narrow a perspective for the management of the Colorado River through the
Grand Canyon. The expanding demand for use of the river has produced
numerous groups of well-defined and well-organized stakeholders. As
trustees for their citizens, the Colorado River basin states have asserted their
claims to a share of the river, and individual groups of water users such as
irrigation districts, utilities, and municipal water suppliers have obtained water
rights to the river and contract rights to the power generated by the dams on
the river. The Colorado River has long been allocated among the seven basin
states by interstate compacts, congressional legislation, and Supreme Court
decrees. Each basin state has a share of the river in perpetuity to distribute
~8
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
~9
to users in the state. The lower-basin states have used their full entitlements
to support irrigated agriculture and unlimited urban growth; the upper-basin
states are trying to do the same but have had less demand. The accom-
modation of traditional stakeholders, however, is no longer the sole function
of dam managers. There are two related reasons for this.
Thefederal dam managers were initially"trustees"forthe basin stases end
individual states holding water rights, but their responsibilities have expanded
overtime. The large dams were built to provide a reliable source of water and
to finance, through power revenues, costly distribution systems that states,
cities, and irrigation districts could not afford. The federal role has been to
subsidize regional water development. When the waterwas allocated and the
large reservoirs were complete, the federal interest declined. Aside from the
possibility of federal reserved water rights for I ndian tribes, the federal interest
is now confined to the recoupment of the monies spent on the dams and
irrigation projects and to management of existing facilities. When the Bureau
of Reclamation (BOR) first began the GOES, it assumed, as did the Western
Area Power Administration (WAPA), that the federal role was unchanged from
the 1920s and 1930s. The GOES, however, revealed that the list of stake-
holders has expanded beyond the states and individual holders of water
rights and that federal agencies have management duties that do not derive
from the Law of the River as it has been historically understood.
The new claimants include Indian tribes, which are asserting quasi-
sovereignty over portions of the river and its associated environment, re-
creational users such as river rafters and sport fishermen, and diverse
environmental groups. Indian tribes have asserted water rights and now
assert broader claims to protect sacred or religious sites in the river corridor
and to participate in the management of the dam. River rafters have permit
entitlements to run the river. Environmental groups have asserted a wide
variety of interests from haze reduction over the Grand Canyon (NRC, 1990)
to modification of dam releases to protect endangered species in the canyon.
Mitigation of identifiecl adverse environmental impacts is the legal strategy
that the nation has followed since the passage of the National Environmental
Policy Act of 1969. Agencies must use the EIS process to identify adverse
environmental impacts and then are expected to mitigate them unless there
are strong reasons, in the context of preexisting programmatic mandates,
why they should not. Mitigation as a long-term strategy is limited because it
is purely reactive. This strategy is supported by the assumption, grounded
in pluralist democratic theory, that the dam should be managed to ac-
commodate the interests of all of the major stakeholders on the river as re
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40
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
fleeted in their actual or potential legal entitlements.
The GCES can be praised for opening the scientific evaluation of dam
operations to a wide variety of stakeholders. Traditional river user groups and
the national environmental community have been sufficiently well organized
and funded to participate in review and evaluation of GCES studies. GCES
has also served other groups; the involvement of Indian tribes is particularly
significant. The focus on present user groups, however, ignores the inter-
generational dimension of Grand Canyon management. Focus on the mit-
igation of selected aciverse impacts does not always produce the most
effective science (see Chapter 2~. Scientific research organized in this way
runs the risk of being fragmented; there is little incentive to integrate the
research into a broaderframework. In addition, better management does not
necessarily follow from the results of investigation that is overly directed by
a list of specific issues.
Of all the stakeholders, the National Park Service (NPS) would be the
most likely candidate to formulate management objectives for the canyon.
This did not happen. The history of Grand Canyon National Park provided no
basis for the development of a management perspective because the river
corridor has never been the focus of the NPS's mission. The primary interest
of the NPS in the river corridor has centered around issuing and monitoring
float trip permits.
The NRC committee's 1 O-year experience with the GCES suggests that
the concept of ecosystem management is a better management model than
mitigation (Chapter 2~. Mitigation is an important component of ecosystem
management, but it is neither the starting nor the ending point. Ecosystem
management does not attempt to fix discrete adverse effects of an activity,
but rather to maintain the vital functions of a natural system as modified by
human activity overtime, through adaptive management. The basic idea is to
develop background norms and then use them to measure the health of the
system. This does not mean, as it is sometimes understood, that the ob-
jective of management is to return the system to a totally natural condition.
The system can be managed for the optimization of any mix of objectives, but
the ecosystem perspectives recognize the inevitable connection of any
management scheme to all resources. As GCES evolved, the need to place
the operation of Glen Canyon Dam in the broader context of management of
the river corridor through the park and adjoining national recreation area
became clearer. The next section of this chapter discusses the history of
Grand Canyon National Park. Its purpose is to show that although the
Colorado River has been central to the formation of the unique geology that
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
41
constitutes the park, it has never been central to the park's management
mission. This may be the root of one of the central problems in GCES: the
discontinuity between the functions of the Colorado River and the agencies
that control the flow of the river.
HISTORY OF GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK
Introduction
The traditional focus of the National Park Service (NPS) in the Grand
Canyon has been the protection of scenic vistas rather than preservation of
the ecological integrity of the Colorado River corridor. The motivation for
GCES and for the EIS on dam operations is that Glen Canyon Dam alters the
flow of the Colorado River through a world-renowned national park, but this
has not been a traditional concern of the most likely stakeholder, the National
Park Service. Not only is the Grand Canyon a unit of the NPS, it is a world
heritage site pursuant to the Convention on World Heritage Sites. An outsider
looking at the history of the GCES, however, would be surprised at the
minimal role played by the NPS in defining the objectives and scope of the
program (Babbitt, 1990~.
Predesignation History
Grand Canyon National Park is one of the crown jewels of our country's
park system. John Wesley Powell's 1869 voyage through the canyon brought
the scenic wonders of the area to public attention in the East. Legislation to
designate the canyon as a national park was introduced in 1882, but
Congress did not act on it for over 35 years. The reasons lie in the politics of
the late frontier and in the lack of access to the canyon. There was no easy
access until the Santa Fe Railroad built a spur from its mainline across
northern Arizona in 1901 and constructed the El Tovar Hotel in 1904. The
area was designated as a national park in 1919, following its designation as
a national forest in 1893, a game reserve in 1906, and a national monument
in 1908 (Ise, 1961).
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42
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
Designation as a Park
After the Santa Fe Railroad began to develop the Grand Canyon, leg-
islation calling for preservation of its natural resources was introduced be-
tween 1905 and 1919 but was not enacted until vested rights claims were
settled. Subordination of the perk to nonpark interests continues today. The
Grand Canyon was designated as a park 3 years after the NPS was es-
tablished, and its management has been strongly influenced by former NPS
Superintendent Mather's administration philosophy, which is to encourage
visitor access to national parks. The park was originally opposed by the
Arizona business community because it would preclude mining and the
development of private concessions. However, as visitor use increased, the
economic value of the park became apparent to the business community,
which then supported its designation as a park. A powerful political figure
and later U.S. Senator, Ralph Henry Cameron, had, however, located a mi-
ning claim in the park in 1908, and preservation of existing valid claims was
one of the conditions for the park's enabling legislation.
Much of the NPS's early efforts were devoted to elimination of the
Cameron mining claims. Henry Cameron tried to control the tourist business
at the rim by locating 45 mining claims on the South Rim at the head of Bright
Angel Trail in 1908. He was able to control access to the trail and Indian
Gardens "to the distress of the Forest Service, the Santa Fe Railroad and,
tourists" (Ise, 1961~. His claims were ultimately invalidated by the Supreme
Court, but Cameron was elected to the Senate in 1920. From his Senate seat,
he was able to harass the NPS and tried to regain control of the trail by
enacting a rider in the NPS's appropriations act forbidding the use of federal
funds for trail maintenance. His influence waned after the Teapot Dome
scandal, but mining was not outlawed until 1931.
The Grand Canyon was set aside as a national park for aesthetic reasons,
and thus the rim rather than the canyon corridor was the object of early NPS
preservation efforts (Leydet, 1964~. As d. Ise, leading historian of the national
parks wrote, the "Grand Canyon is remarkable mainly as our most spec-
tacular scenic wonder" (Ise, 1961~. The national parks were established in a
spirit of cultural nationalism; they were a substitute for the man-made
monuments of Europe (Runte, 1979~. As a result, the rim view was treated as
the primary attribute of the canyon. The more adventurous visitors took
Bright Angel Trail to Phantom Ranch, but the river was not central to these
activities. Viewed from the rim, the huge hydrological variations of the un-
impounded river were barely perceptible.
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
43
In U.S. law regarding public lands, national parks have single ratherthan
multiple purposes, and the preservation of scenic grandeur is the historic
statutory mission of the NPS. Section 1 of the NPS 's enabling legislation (16
U.S.C. ~ 1 ) requires the Secretary of the Interior to manage the system units
"by such means as will leave them unimpaired for future generations." In
1878, Congress supplemented this mandate by directing the Interior
Secretaryto administerthe parks "in light of the high public value and integrity
of the National Park system" (16 U.S.C. ~ 1a-1~. No specific additional
mandates are found in the legislation governing the Grand Canyon. The
general mandates are, however, misleading. Parks are federal land man-
agement units subject to competing demands, and the actual mission of the
NPS has been the promotion and accommodation of visitor use.
The history of Grand Canyon National Park is one of constant expansion
of visitor comfort and services and a consequent decrease in visitor ap-
preciation of the canyon as wilderness. This is the legacy of Stephen Mather
and Horace Alright. These first two park superintendents established a
powerful constituency for the idea of national parks by promoting easy
access and visitor enjoyment (Forestra, 1983~. Because the main canyon
asset has been perceived as primarily geological, there has been insufficient
attention to other components of the ecosystem (Nash, 1983~. Until the
1 960s, boat trips down the canyon were limited to scientific surveys or a few
intrepid adventurers, some of whom lost their lives (Hughes, 1 978~. I n fact the
NPS has historically taken the position that the river corridor does not qualify
for designation under the Wilderness Act of 1964 because of the historic and
continuing use of outboard motors on it.
The importance of the view at the Grand Canyon is illustrated by the
federal government's responses to haze. In 1968, legislation to complete the
Colorado River storage plan with a reservoir at either end of the canyon, and
to finance construction of the Central Arizona Project with revenues from
these, was defeated after a national political campaign led by the Sierra Club.
Ironically, as a substitute for the defeated hydra projects, a coal-fired power
plant, the Navajo generating station, was built near the dam in Page, Arizona.
The plant contributed greatly to a persistent haze in the Four Corners Area
(NRC, 1990), and in 1990 Congress attempted to resolve the issue by
requiring the Navajo generating plant to install scrubbers.
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44
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
Role of the Colorado River in the Park:
Conduit Between Upper and Lower Basins
In retrospect, it is amazing that the Colorado River corridor is as un-
developed as it is today. In 1919 the river had not been allocated between
basins, but the necessityfor an allocation and for carryover storage reservoirs
to support the allocation were recognized by western politicians, and the
pending allocation of the Colorado River influenced the enabling legislation.
The enabling legislation (16 U.S.C. ~ 227) permits use of the canyon for
reclamation projects and authorizes construction of reclamation projects.
Historically, the river's primary function has been as a conduit between
the upper and lower basins. The seven Colorado River basin states have
been given mass allocations by interstate compacts, congressional leg-
islation, and Supreme Court degree. In addition, the claims of Mexico have
been recognized by treaty and executive agreements. Under the 1922
Colorado River Compact, which allocatesthe river between the upper and the
lower basins, the river is divided at Lee's Ferry above the canyon. Each basin
was allocated 7.5 million acre-feet (may, because 15 mat was erroneously
assumed to be the average annual flow of the river. Each basin shares
equally in the obligation to provide an additional 1.5 mat to Mexico. To allow
the more slowly developing upper basin to meet its delivery obligations to the
lower basin, the compact defines the upper basin's delivery obligations to
Arizona, California, and Nevada as 75 mat over a progressive series of 10-
year periods, and the federal government has constructed two large car-
ryover storage reservoirs to guarantee the upper basin's ability to meet this
obligation during sustained droughts. Water moves through the river from the
upper basin's storage reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam to the lower basin
at Boulder Dam in order to meet the upper basin's 8.3 mat annual compact
and treaty delivery obligations to Arizona, California, Nevada, and the Re-
public of Mexico. The net result of the construction of these two storage and
hydroelectric generating dams is thatthe Colorado River has become entirely
regulated hydrologically (Fradkin, 1981~. The Park Service's long history of
trying to preserve the natural environment of the Grand Canyon rim (with the
exception of visitor access facilities) makes it ill-equipped to manage
regulated systems such as the Colorado River (Carothers and Brown, 1991~.
Congress responded directly to new constituencies in the passage of the
1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act, although passage of the 1968 Colorado
River Storage Project Act (43 U.S.C. § ~ 620-620O) marked a fundamental
change in the role of the river's corridor. The 1968 act reflected the defeat of
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
45
efforts to construct two dams at either end of the canyon to finance the
Central Arizona Project and authorized the operation of the dam for
environmental protection as well as for power carryover storage and power
generation (Marion and Wallick, 1991~. The Grand Canyon Protection Act of
1992 is a direct outcome of the GCES's identification of the need for a
different release pattern from the dam to both build beaches and retard beach
erosion. In 1990, GOES scientists proposed a research flow program to test
the impacts of less fluctuating flows and the spring beach-building pulses on
the corriclor. Legislation authorizing interim flows was introduced in the
House and Senate in 1990 (H.R. 4498, 101 Cong., 1 st sees., 1990), but the act
was not passed for 2 years. Initially, the Department of the Interior opposed
the legislation because the research flows had not been implemented and
evaluated, but this opposition ended after BOR and WAPA agreed to an
experimental interim flow regime in late 1991. The basic purpose of the act
changed from a congressional mandate to a more general effort to expand
management objectives. The act establishes the legality of river corridor
enhancement flows consistent with the Law of the River.
Section 1802 of the 1992 act requires that the Secretary of the Interior
operate the dam in a manner consistent with the Law of the River, including
the Endangered Species Act "to mitigate adverse impacts to and improve the
values for which the Grand Canyon National Park and the Glen Canyon
National Recreation Area were established, including but not limited to natural
and cultural resources and visitor use." The act makes the EIS the basis for
future management. The 1991 agreement is continued, with limited excep-
tions, pending completion and implementation of the EIS (§ 1803~. Section
1 804 requires that the Secretary of the I nterior use the "findings, conclusions,
and recommendations" of the EIS to adopt management criteria and op-
erating plans in addition to those specified in Section 602 of the Colorado
Basin Project Act of 1968.
FUTURE BASIS FOR MANAGEMENT OF
GRAND CANYON RESOURCES
Intergenerational Equity
The monies expended on the GOES can best be justified because society
cares about the future of the river corridor and has some sense of obligation
to future generations. Specifically, it is now widely recognized that the un
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46
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
denying philosophical principle of much environmental management is in-
tergenerational equity. Under emerging norms of international environmental
law, the Unded States holds the canyon in trust for future generations. The
idea of intergenerational equity was developed by Weiss (1989) and has
rapidly been adopted as the ethical norm against which major international
agreements and mandates must be tested. The basic idea is that "[wie as a
species, hold the natural and cultural environment of our planet, both with
members of the present generation and with other generations, past and
future." The precise contours of intergenerational duties are not self~efining,
but the core idea is that each generation has a duty to manage its common
patrimony for the benefit of the next generation.
Adoption of intergenerational equityfundamentally changes the nature of
the decision-making process regardless of the precise content of the duty.
Present actions should rather be evaluated in terms of the long-term con-
sequences, and all present-value economic calculations of commodityvalues
should be weighed against calculations that estimate the future value of
resources and incorporate the assumption that environmental quality is the
marginal value of natural or nondegraded resources and is likely to increase
over time. This is the essence of the difference between the economics of
sustainable development and traditional cost-benefit calculations (Pearce et
al., 1990~.
Intergenerational equity has long been part of the Law of the River and of
the GCES, but there was no systematic effort to articulate the principles and
to apply them to GCES research and Glen Canyon management options. The
1922 Colorado River Compact apportions the river between the upper and the
lower basins in perpetuity. Thus, the rights of future generations to a
sustainable use of the resource are explicitly recognized. The GCES included
studies of nonuse value (Chapter 7~. Such studies implicitly reject the pre-
vailing economic theory that present consumption is preferred to future
consumption, except over short time horizons. The controversy over the
legitimacy of nonuse values per se, as well as the techniques required to
quantify them (such as contingent valuation) led the BOR and WAPA to
oppose their use during the early stages of the GCES.
Simulated Naturalness
As indicated by the review of Grand Canyon history, the policies and
objectives that apply to national parks have been largely disconnected from
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
47
the management of Glen Canyon Dam, even though the dam influences the
characteristics of the river and riparian environment through Grand Canyon
National Park. Through GOES and through the EIS, the BOR has ack-
nowledged that there is considerable latitude for variation in the operation of
Glen Canyon Dam, evenwithinthe binding legal constraintsforwaterdelivery
and the need to protect the dam from damage by flood. If there were no flex-
ibility in operation, the effects of the dam on the national park downstream
would simply be one of the baseline conditions for the national park. Given
that operation is flexible, however, its management should take into account
the presence of the national park downstream.
The present strategy of BOR and its cooperating agencies, as shown by
the EIS on Glen Canyon Dam operations, is to acknowledge the potential
effect of dam operations on a wide variety of resources, and to consider pat-
terns of operation that reflect at least some concern for the welfare of all
resources. This type of optimization strategy is a common principle for
modern environmental management, and offers many beneficial possibilities
for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The principle of optimization
does not, however, provide any firm objective for management because op-
timization is achieved by the assignment of differential weightings to various
resources. These weightings are subject to large degrees of negotiation and
professional judgment.
A different kind of management principle, which might be called the
principle of naturalness, appliesto national parks. Management is minimized,
and where it must occur, it is directed toward the maintenance of envi-
ronmental regime that as nearly as possible resembles the natural or un-
disturbed condition of the environment. It seems unreasonable to consider
the future operation of Glen Canyon Dam without also considering the
principle of naturalness as it might apply to the Grand Canyon National Park.
While many aspects of the Grand Canyon are in fact natural or at least not
subject to management or direct human perturbation, the river itself and the
riparian corridor inevitably are a reflection of human action because of the
existence of Glen Canyon Dam. The dam will continue to exist and will
inevitably be a means by which the downstream environment is managed,
either haphazardly or toward particular goals. The GOES has shown that
operation of the dam can be modified in various ways to restore a greater
degree of naturalness to the river and riparian environments through
maintenance or restoration of physical characteristics of the environment
such as beaches or biotic resources such as endangered species. Given the
emphasis of national parks on naturalness, and the flexibility of operations to
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48
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
restore some aspects of naturalness, one obvious basis for future man
agement of Glen Canyon Dam might be characterized as simulated nat-
uralness, which could be defined as the use of operational flexibilityto restore
and maintain environmental conditions in the national park that resemble as
nearly as possible the original condition of the river.
Many aspects of the river corridor in Grand Canyon National Park cannot
feasibly resemble the original river corridor. As shown by the chapters to
follow, however, there are many ways in which the environmental conditions
along the river can be restored to a more natural state. These possibilities,
some of which are in place or under construction, include adaptation of a
more natural hydrologic regime, the introduction of controlled floods, res-
toration of seasonally warm water in the river, and maintenance of habitat and
physical features such as beaches through manipulation of water and
sediment. The acloption of simulated naturalness would give a unifying theme
and purpose to operational charges with these objectives, and would provide
a blueprint for the future.
For many intensively managed environmental systems, including the
tailwaters and pools of most reservoirs in the United States, it makes little
sense to manage toward simulation of natural conditions. Instead, the more
pragmatic optimization approach provides a tool by which societal pre-
ferences, tangible resource values, and operational flexibility can be brought
together in a management plan. The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon is
not, however, a typical tailwater. It lies in a national park and is thus subject
to the special purposes that apply uniquely to national parks. One of these
purposes clearly is the maintenance and restoration of conditions that are,
within reasonable limits of human effort and expense, natural. Thus there is
much to recommend the principle of simulated naturalness as a future basis
for management of Glen Canyon Dam, even though such a principle might be
unjustifiably confining for the operation of large reservoirs in general.
REFERENCES
Babbitt, B. 1990. Introduction: down the imperiled Colorado. Land and
Water Law Review 25:1.
Bureau of Reclamation. 1995. Operation of Glen Canyon Dam. Final
Environmental Impact Statement, March, U.S. Department ofthe Interior,
Washington, D.C.
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Historical Context for Long-Term Management
49
Carothers, S.W., and B.T. Brown. 1991. The Colorado RiverThrough Grand
Canyon. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Foresta, R. 1983. America's National Parks and Their Keepers. Washington,
D.C.: Resources for the Future.
Fradkin, P. 1981. A River No More. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Hughes, J.D. 1978. In the House of Stone and Light: A Human History of the
Grand Canyon. Arizona: Grand Canyon Natural History Association.
Ise, d. 1961. Our National Park Policy: A Critical History. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Leyd et, F. 1964. Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon. San Fransisco:
Sierra Club Books.
Marion, K., and D. Wallick. 1991. Glen Canyon Dam Operating Authority:
Producing Electricity and Protecting the Grancl Canyon Environme'nt.
Land and Water Law Review 26:183.
Nash, R. 1983. Wilderness Values and the Colorado River. Pp. 201-214 in
New Courses for the Colorado River' Major Issues for the Next Century.
G. Weatherford and F. Lee Brown, eds. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
National Research Council. 1990. Haze in the Grand Canyon. Washington,
D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council. 1991. Colorado River Ecology and Dam Man-
agement. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press.
Pearce, D., et al. 1990. Sustainable Development: Economics and the
Environment in the Third World. Brookfield, VI: E. Elgar Publishing Co.
Runte, A. 1979. National Parks: The American Experience. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.
Weiss, E.B. 1989. In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law,
Common Patrimony and Intergenerational Equity 17.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
national park
