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1
Introduction and Background
In writing about the Colorado River, John Wesley Powell (1895) noted the
irony of snowmelt maintaining a riverthrough hundreds of miles of the honest
and driest terrain in North America. Descending from almost 3 miles above
sea level near Long's Peak in Colorado and in the Wind River range of
Wyoming, the Colorado River's sources quickly reach flatter topography in
Utah and Colorado while still more than a mile above sea level. The river
continues its plunge toward sea level through canyons that ultimately trench
the plateau to a depth of more than a mile. Because the canyons allow the
river to seek its final level quickly, the Colorado moves with notorious energy.
A modern irony equal to Powell's irony of ice water in the desert is that
the Colorado River, known for its extraordinary rush to the sea, now typically
fails to reach the sea at all. In Powell's day, water moved freely from the snow
fields of the Rockies to the Gulf of California in 1 to 3 months, depending on
the season. At present, only about 10 percent of the annual yield crosses
from the United States to Mexico, where even this remnant is consumed
before it can reach the Gulf of California. Although Powell nodded app-
rovingly at evidence of prehistoric irrigation practices by Indian tribes along
the Colorado (Powell, 1895), he would probably have been surprised to see
the entire flow of the Colorado thus fully diverted for human use.
The Colorado's flow is held by two very large reservoirs and many smaller
ones, all of which comprise a total volume of 58 million acre-feet (Andrews,
1991), or approximately four times the mean annual flow of the river. Water
passes from the reservoirs for consumptive use, most of which is accounted
for by irrigation. As a significant by-product, the reservoirs of the Colorado
River in aggregate produce about 13 billion kwh of hydroelectric energy
11
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12
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
(Plummer, 1983~.
Of the many reservoirs that impound the Colorado, Lakes Powell and
Mead are the most impressive; they are the two largest reservoirs in the
western Unded States. The dams for these two reservoirs, which produce
most of the electricity and hold most of the water of the Colorado River,
together inundate over 300 miles of the river. While the two dams are of
similar size and provide many of the same benefits, Glen Canyon Dam, which
impounds Lake Powell, is of particular importance because it holds back the
Colorado River in front of the Grand Canyon (Figure 1.1~.
Congress authorized the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1956 as
part of the Colorado River Storage Project Act. The dam was proposed by
the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), which assumed responsibility for its
operation when the dam closed in 1963. The Glen Canyon Dam was a
realization of the Reclamation Act of 1902, according to which arid lands of
the American West would be extensively irrigated with waters from western
rivers. Without a dam on the upper mainstem of the Colorado River, use of
its water would have been inefficient and thus contrary to the goals of
reclamation.
Two factors added particular motivation to the construction of a dam on
the upper mainstem of the Colorado River. First was the Law of the River,
which includes not only the Colorado River Compact of 1922 but also all
previous and subsequent statutes, judicial decisions, and treaties that affect
the disposition of the river's waters (Ingram et al., 1990~. The Law of the River
evolved under the assumption that the Colorado River could deliver at Lee's
Ferry just over 16 million acre-feet per year, of which 15 million was to be
divided equally between the states of the upper basin (Colorado, Utah,
Wyoming) and the lower basin (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada) and
the remaining 1.5 million was to go to Mexico. By 1950, it was clear that this
assumption was based on an overestimate, which, when combined with
inevitable droughts, would either prevent the upper-basin states from using
their full allocation or would cause them to default on their delivery obl igations
to the lower basin (Dawdy, 1991~. A large dam on the upper mainstem would
cover the immediate damage from miscalculation of the yield until such time
as an extended drought might coincide with the upper basin's full use of its
allocation. In addition, a dam on the upper mainstem would produce
hydroelectric power revenues that could be used to finance delivery or
storage of water throughout the basin (Ingram et al., 1991~. Without subsidy
from hydropower, the BOR's constellation of water projects in the Colorado
River basin would have been impractical, especially in the sparsely populated
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14
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
upper basin, because most projects required strong external subsidies that
could be sustained only by a revenue stream. Thus, the Glen Canyon Dam
was not merely a reclamation project but also a guarantor of integrity for the
Law of the River and patron of regional reclamation projects that otherwise
would have perished for lack of cash.
The Colorado River Storage Project Act listed beneficial use of water,
reclamation of arid and semiarid lands, and control of floods as primary
purposes of the Glen Canyon Dam. The act also mentioned hydroelectric
power but only as an "incident" of other specifically mentioned purposes. In
qualifying hydropower production in this way, the act ensured that power
production would never challenge the Law of the River. Even so, Congress
showed its concern for production of revenue by specifying that Glen Canyon
Dam be operated in such a way as to produce maximum power at firm rates
consistent with the overriding requirements for delivery of water.
In practice, the secondary status of hydropower proved to be not very
restrictive because the central requirementforefficient hydropower marketing
is flexibility in hourly or daily scheduling of discharges, whereas such short
time scales are typically irrelevant to the delivery of water for consumptive use
(Hughes, 1991~. Power production and water delivery might come into
conflict but only under the most extreme hydrological conditions. Thus, Glen
Canyon Dam was able to deliver water, power, and money in quantity by
using an operating regime that featured annual divisions of runoff between the
upper-and lower-basin states and daily or hourly phasing of discharge in
response to fluctuations in demand for power.
Glen Canyon Dam aroused only minor opposition in the 1950s when it
was authored. Most of the opposition came from the Bureau of Reclamation
which initially rejected the site because of the problems caused by the soft
sandstone. The site was a compromise selection in 1956 after con-
servationists succeeded in stopping a dam on the Green River which would
encroach on Dinosaur National Monument and traded Glen Canyon for no
dam on the Green (Fradkin, 1981 .) In retrospect, it is clear that Glen Canyon
Dam slipped through a partly closed door; two other mainstem projects
(Marble Gorge and Bridge Canyon) running slightly behind Glen Canyon were
killed by public opposition.
Struggles over the authorization of new dams were so intense from 1965
to 1980 that they diverted attention from the operation of existing dams.
Management principles for Glen Canyon Dam were essentially static for
almost 20 years following completion of the dam, even though the political
landscape metamorphosed drastically over this interval. A changed per
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Introduction and Background
15
caption of the public welfare was evident as far back as 1968, when the
Colorado River Basin Project Act broadened the definition of purposes for
operation of the dam to include not only storage and delivery of water but
also maintenance of water quality, outdoor recreation, and fish and wildlife.
The 1968 act again listed power production as an incident of other purposes.
The broadened purposes for operation of the dam were reconfirmed in 1992
with the Grand Canyon Protection Act, which cited the need to "mitigate
adverse impacts to and improve the values for which Grand Canyon National
Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area were established, including,
but not limited to natural and cultural resources and visitor use."
Several forces were behind Congress' decision to intervene in the
operation of Glen Canyon Dam. The most important change in the legal
frame of reference was the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Although
the ESA did not immediately change the operation of Glen Canyon Dam, it set
the stage for operations that would be answerable to the welfare of the
Colorado River's endemic fishes and possibly to endangered species of the
riparian zone as well. The effect of the ESA was magnified by the National
Environmental Policy Act (N EPA) of 1970, which assured an extended public
examination of the welfare of endangered species and of other resources that
had not been considered in the development of the original operating rules
for the dam. Given that the NEPA required significant federal action as a
trigger, however, it did not begin to affect the operation of Glen Canyon Dam
until the 1 980s.
New constituencies also developed around Glen Canyon Dam. The trout
fishery of the dam's tailwater maintained a steady concern for the welfare and
growth of trout, while the rafting industry, which is based on some 30,000
annual participants in short trips and 20,000 participants in long trips through
the canyon (BOR, 1993), focused attention on the number, size, and stability
of beaches for camping. Following judicial validation of their rights to the
river's water, Native American tribes gradually also asserted their claim to
evaluate the dam's operations. Finally, environmental groups, representing
not only their members but also a more diffuse change in societal attitudes
about environmental resources, showed their willingness to discard the initial
assumptions upon which the operating rules were based.
The traditional operating rules were of direct benefit to the consumers of
power through the regional marketing network. Power from Glen Canyon
Dam, although produced by the BOR through management of the dam, is
marketed by the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), an agency of
the U.S. Department of Energy. Given that the daily and weekly operating
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16
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
schedules for the dam had been optimized around the marketing of power,
any change in the operating rules could be expected to reduce the value of
power from Glen Canyon Dam. WAPA spoke against changes in the op-
erating rules on these grounds. The BOR was predisposed to identify
strongly with WAPA's priorities. Not only had the bureau been directed in the
original authorizing legislation for Glen Canyon Dam to produce maximum
revenue from power, it had also assumed that revenue from the dam would
sustain its other projects in the Colorado River Basin.
Between 1970 and 1980, major changes in the operating rules for Glen
Canyon Dam would have been difficult, even if the BOR had wanted to make
them. Water delivery, flow control, and optimization of hydropower revenues
presented a complex but deterministically soluble set of demands for release
of wafer from the dam. In contrast, the requirements of endangered species,
trout, recreation, and Native American tribes could not be specified even
qualitatively because they had not been sufficiently studied. Priorto 1980, the
BOR could find no basis for changing the operating rules of Glen Canyon
Dam, even though an array of new resources had been added to the list of
purposes for operating the dam.
Before passage of the NEPA, federal management agencies had leg-
itimately claimed that they were not authorized to study the environmental
effects of management practices. NEPA reversed this line of reasoning
overnight; studies were not only allowed, they were mandatory.
In the early 1 980s the BOR foresaw the need to rewind the Glen Canyon
generators and also proposed to increase generator capacity and adjust
operations to increase output of peaking power. This led it to consider the
preparation of either an environmental assessment or a full environmental
impact statement (EIS). The bureau hoped to avoid an EIS, which would
have been the first to examine the full scope of operations for a reservoir
constructed prior to passage of the NEPA. To support its decision not to
conduct an EIS the BOR needed data. To provide the data, it created the
Glen Canyon Environmental Studies (GOES).
The bureau at first constrained the GOES very narrowly, partly on the
incorrect theory that the Law of the River precluded significant operational
changes. Environmental data were to be collected primarily near the dam,
and analysis of operating regimes that might result in significant loss of
efficiency in hydropower marketing was prohibited. Analysis of aesthetic and
cultural values was also ruled out of bounds. While needing to provide
support for its contention that a small increase in generator capacity would
have at most small environmental effects, the BOR clearly did not wish to
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Introduction and Background
17
invite questioning of its fundamental operating rules. Rather than coming to
a quick conclusion, however, the GCES merely proved with increased cer-
tainty the need for environmental studies of broader scope.
In administering and designing GCES, the BOR maintained its close
working relationship with WAPA, which advised it on potential impairment of
hydropower marketing that might result from changes in operation of the
dam. In fact, the revenues gathered by WAPA from hydropower paid for the
GCES program. In addition, the BOR created an interagency group con-
sisting of agencies with responsibility for protection or management of
environmental resources below Glen Canyon Dam. The agencies initially
included the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the
Arizona Game and Fish Department but were later broadened to include
Indian tribes with territorial or cultural interests in the Grand Canyon. Much
of the push to extend and broaden GCES came from the resource man-
agement agencies that, without the BOR, had no means of financing
extensive studies of the resources below Glen Canyon Dam.
The BOR was criticized externally for lack of credibility in conducting
environmental studies. Although agencies with environmental responsibilities
were well represented in the design and execution of the GCES, the bureau,
in cooperation with WAPA, provided both the money and management for
GCES. Given the BOR's historical commitment to water delivery and power
production, its control of GCES presented at least the potential for conflict of
interest.
ROLE OF THE NRC
Desiring to maintain credibility for its newly expanded studies, the BOR
in 1986 requested that the National Research Council (NRC) form a
committee to provide scientific reviews of the GCES. The NRC's Water
Science and Technology Board sponsored the formation of a committee in
1986 (Table 1.1).
The firsttask of the Committee to Reviewthe Glen Canyon Environmental
Studies was to review the results of Phase I of GCES, which was nearing
completion as the committee was being formed. The committee found
considerable value in GCES but also criticized the program for insufficient
geographic and conceptual scope, weak integration of components, lack of
a clear master plan, and excessively internalized staffing of the research effort
(NRC, 1987~. The committee called for external scientific oversight, inclusion
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18
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
TABLE 1.1 Sequence of Events for GCES
Event
Year
1. Initiation of GCES Phase I
2. NRC Committee on GCES appointed
3. Release of first NRC report
4. Initiation of GCES Phase 11
5. NRC sponsored review of USGS sediment study plan
6. Initiation of environmental impact study
7. Creation of federal cooperators group
8. NRC sponsored Grand Canyon symposium
9. Start of experimental flows for Glen Canyon Dam
10. Start of interim flows for Glen Canyon Dam
11. Addition of Indian tribes to cooperators group
12. Formation of GCES external advisory board
13. NRC review of the long-term monitoring plan
14. Release of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Final
Biological Opinion on the humpback chub
15. NRC review of draft EIS
16. Release of final environmental impact statement
17. Record of decision for EIS
-
1983
1 986
1 987
1987
1 988
1 989
1 990
1990
1991
1991
1991
1 993
1 994
1 994
1 995
1 995
1 996a
aAnticipated
of a senior scientist on the study team, more open contracting procedures,
better planning and integration, and extension of scope.
The committee had two objectives in making its final review of GCES.
The first was to determine the degree to which GCES has been successful in
providing a firm scientific basis for assessing the consequences of various
management options for Glen Canyon Dam. The second objective was to
extract from GCES some of the possibilities and limitations for cooperative
government studies of ecological systems that must be managed for the use
and protection of multiple resources.
From its review of GCES Phase 1, the NRC committee concluded that the
GCES program was in part handicapped by the absence of a comprehensive
review of environmental studies in the Grand Canyon. As a means of ass-
isting GCES in drawing together all useful information and also of soliciting
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Introduction and Background
19
analysis and comment from scientists with a working knowledge of the
Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, the committee sponsored a symposium
in May 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The proceedings of this symposium
were published along with a revised set of recommendations for GCES (NRC,
1991~. In this second set of recommendations, the committee called for a
plan for long-term research and monitoring that would succeed GCES. The
committee also recommended that operation of the dam be viewed more
flexibly and that a more explicit ecosystem approach be used in analyzing
environmental resources. In addition, it repeated its earlier recommendation
that scientific expertise external to the cooperating agencies be used much
more extensively.
In 1989 Secretary ofthe Interior Manuel Lujan notified the BOR thatfuture
operation of Glen Canyon Dam should be designed on the basis of an EIS to
be completed no laterthan 1994. This requirement was later embodied in the
Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992, which states:
·ong-term monitoring of Glen Canyon Dam shall include any
necessary research and studies to determine the effect of the
Secretary's actions under section 1204 (c) on the natural, rec
reational, and cultural resources of Grand Canyon National Park and
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
The secretary also directed that a second EIS be conducted of the power
marketing for Glen Canyon Dam. Preparation of the operations EIS was to
be directed by the BOR, and preparation of the marketing EIS was to be
directed by WAPA.
The secretary's decision had a profound effect on GCES and on the
scope of the NRC committee's work. GCES served as the main source of
information for the EIS on operations. Although GCES was not charged with
actual preparation of the EIS, time and effort of the GCES team were con-
sumed in providing information for the EIS team. Thus, the EIS slowed the
progress of GCES. The NRC committee included review of the draft EIS as
part of its work, given that the EIS was an important application of information
from GCES (NRC, 1994~.
The two ElSs were significant in several ways. They set a deadline for
firm decisions on the mode of operation for Glen Canyon Dam. In addition,
they brought about the application of GCES information to management of
the dam and thus set the stage for adaptive management of dam operations.
Finally, they marked the end of an era of intensive study and a transition to
long-term monitoring.
The GCES was complicated by a number of management and policy
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20
River Resource Management in the Grand Canyon
issues that required resolution prior to its termination. The first of these was
design of an interim flow regime that would bridge the gap between historical
operating practices and potentially new operating practices derived from the
EIS Record of Decision. The interim flows are an important landmark in the
history of Glen Canyon Dam because they signify the decision of the BOR to
modify its operation of the dam in a significant way to protect environmental
resources, atthe cost of reduced efficiency in power marketing. In evaluating
interim flows, GCES scientists had the important responsibility of recom-
mending operational strategies that would be the most likely to protect or
optimize environmental resources over the short term.
Another important addition to the central task of GCES was the design of
a long-term monitoring program. The bureau concluded that the GCES team
would be the best source of recommendations on long-term monitoring and
elected to include a long-term monitoring plan in the operations EIS. The
GCES team turned to the NRC committee for assistance in organizing a
workshop on long-term monitoring. The workshop included 50 scientists
chosenfortheirknowledge ofthe environmental system ofthe Grand Canyon
or for their experience with long-term environmental monitoring in general.
The proceedings of the workshop were given to the GCES senior scientist as
a basis for design of the monitoring plan. The committee subsequently
reviewed the draft monitoring plan and offered a number of suggestions and
criticisms, the most important of which were lack of specificity in the plan and
failure of the plan to include guidelines for administration or funding of the
monitoring program.
The BOR also asked the GCES team to make recommendations for
studies to be completed in the event of a controlled flood flow that was
tentatively scheduled for early 1994. This flood flow for 1994 was cancelled
because of possible lawsuits and because there was not enough water
available. An experimental flood flow was then scheduled for spring of 1995
which was cancelled again because of possible lawsuits by the upper basin
states and the need for compliance with the National Environmental
Protection Act (NEPA). Another experimental flood flow is tentatively
scheduled for spring, 1996. Controlled floods had appeared as a component
of the preliminary draft EIS and as recommendations from experts on
sediment transport, who pointed out that the rebuilding of steadily eroding
beaches in the canyon would require periodic high flows of relatively short
duration (several days), even though such flows had been avoided in the past
because they involve the loss of hydropower revenues. An abundance of
water in 1993, combined with the development of a long-term operational
plan, set the stage for a controlled flood. GCES was charged with designing
a data collection system that would show both the effectiveness of a flood
flow in rebuilding beaches and any unexpected negative effects that the flow
might have on other resources in the canyon.
OCR for page 21
Introduction and Background
21
The final products of GCES include some 65 individual reports that
summarize the studies of individual environmental components such as trout
populations, cultural resources, and sediment transport (Figure 1.2~. The
products of GCES were also initially scheduled to include synthesis of
individual studies and use of the synthesis to project the effects of various
operating strategies on environmental resources below Glen Canyon Dam.
The synthesis was not completed as of September 1995, but the operations
EIS includes preliminary synthesis based on information from GCES as of
about 1993. The chapters that follow give the NRC committee's review of the
GCES.
While the results of the GCES are of pressing relevance to the protection
of resources in the Grand Canyon, they also serve as an excellent case study
of the federal government's efforts to use ecosystem science as a guide to
environmental management.
OCR for page 22
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Introduction and Background
23
REFERENCES
And rews, E.D. 1991 . Sediment transport in the Colorado River Basin. Pp. 54-
74 in Colorado River Ecology and Dam Management. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press.
Bureau of Reclamation. 1993. Operation of Glen Canyon Dam Colorado River
Storage Project, Arizona. Draft Environmental Impact Statement, U.S.
Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.
Dawdy, D.R. 1991. Hydrology of Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon. Pp.
40-53 in Colorado River Ecology and Dam Management. Washington,
D.C.: National Acaclemy Press.
Hughes, T.C. 1981. Reservoir operations. Pp. 207-225 in Colorado River
Ecology and Dam Management. Washington, D.C.: National Academy
Press.
Ingram, H., A.D. Tarlock, and C.R. Oggins. 1991. The law and politics of the
operation of Glen Canyon Dam. Pp. 10-27 in Colorado River Ecology and
Dam Management. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Martin, R. 1989. A Story that Stands Like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the
Struggle for the Soul of the West. New York: Holt.
National Research Council. 1987. River and Dam Management: A Review of
the Bureau of Reclamation's Glen Canyon Environmental Studies.
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council. 1991. Colorado River Ecology and Dam
Management. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council. 1994. Review of the Draft Environmental Impact
Statement on Operation of Glen Canyon Dam. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press.
Plummer, B. 1983. The Colorado River, a river for many people. Pp. 3-1 1 in
Aquatic Resources Management of the Colorado River Ecosystem, D.D.
Adams and V.A. I~marra, eds. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ann Arbor Science.
Powell, ~I.W. 1895. Canyons of the Colorado. Reprinted by Argosy-
Antiquarian, New York, 1964.
Reisner, M. 1986. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing
Water. New York: Viking Press.
Valdez and Ryel. 1995. Life history and ecology of the humpback chub (Gila
cypha) in the Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Arizona. Final Report to the
Bureau of Reclamation, Contract No. 0-CS-40-09110. Bio/West Report
No. TR-250-08.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
canyon dam
