2 views of Lake Powell: 'insurance policy,' outdated

Sharply conflicting views about the value of Glen Canyon Dam were voiced during a panel discussion at the Utah Historical Society's annual meeting last week.

Glen Canyon Dam and its reservoir, Lake Powell, provide security by regulating the flow of the Colorado River, said Wayne Cook, former director of the Upper Colorado River Commission. The river carries about 5.5 million acre-feet of water during a dry year, he said. "In the flood years it's been known to run 25 million acre-feet."

The reservoir was built to provide security both from drought for the Upper Colorado River Basin states and safety from floods in the lower basin states, he said. It also guarantees that the lower basin states receive a certain amount of water, pegged at 75 million acre-feet over 10 years.

Doug Hendrix, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — the agency that manages the federal reservoirs on the Colorado River — said Glen Canyon Dam is one of the most important structures on the river system. "It exists because we have chosen to live in the arid Southwest," he said.

The dividing point between the upper and lower basin states is Lee's Ferry, Ariz., just below the Utah border, he said.

Lake Powell amounts to "an insurance policy" for residents of the upper basin, which includes Utah, he said. Without the lake storing water for the lower basin, this region could not provide water to the other basin — water that the upper states are legally required to provide.

In that case, Utah's would-be water users might have to watch their rivers flow past en route to Nevada and California without being able to use the water.

The area is going through its fifth straight year of drought, Hendrix said. It is important that states, the federal government, Indian tribes and others work together during these tough times, he added.

The Southwest is "extremely fortunate" to have dams, Hendrix said. They have allowed the government to meet all its water delivery obligations even during these dry years, "and we'll continue to do so, even if the drought lasts several more years."

Moderator for the panel was Bud Rusho, former spokesman for the bureau's Upper Colorado Region who is now retired and who has won notice as a historian. He noted that Wayne Aspinall, the Colorado congressman who helped sponsor the Glen Canyon legislation, was asked in the middle 1980s if the dam could be built then, in light of the environmental movement and other changes since its construction began in 1956.

Aspinall simply replied, "Not a chance," Rusho said.

Dan McCool, director of the American West Center at the University of Utah and a political science professor, said the dam is "the monument to that era," the 1950s.

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