Environmentalist amplify call for new approach
Contact: Owen Lammers 435-259-1063
In a draft paper circulated last week, lead scientists for the federal program overseeing endangered fish recovery in Grand Canyon National Park noted that their principal approach has been a "failure".
For more than ten years dam managers have been emphasizing a specific flow regime from Glen Canyon Dam asserting that it would reverse the decline of the endangered humpback chub. Instead, the declines have averaged about 14 percent annually since the early 1990s the draft paper says.
"While they may still tinker with the details of their paper, the word failure will continue to ring loud and clear," says Owen Lammers, Living Rivers/Colorado Riverkeeper executive director. "We've been arguing for years that the Bureau of Reclamation heed the advice of the Fish and Wildlife Service and implement flows more consistent with the river's natural hydrograph if they want to stop the decline of native fish populations, but instead, even after admitting failure, they want to head further in the wrong direction."
The paper advocates moving away from what has been called Modified Low Fluctuating Flows, which restrict dam operators to water releases between 5,000 and 25,000 cubic feet per second. Restrictions were also place on the hourly rate for increasing and decreasing flows from the dam, not to exceed 4,000 and 1,500 cubic feet per-second per-hour respectively.
Previously, dam operators were free to increase or decrease flows based on electricity demand. The paper argues that upwards of $50 million annually have been lost in hydropower revenues since these flows have been implemented.
"The Bureau of Reclamation wants to say they tried it and it didn't work, but they never actually implemented what was asked of them by the Fish and Wildlife Service to recover the fish," says Lammers. "They now want more variable flows which may restore revenues, but it may be game over for the last remaining humpback chub."
The authors also state their flow regimes have "failed to produce their intended benefits for sediment resources in Grand Canyon." With 95 percent of Grand Canyon's sediment and nutrients trapped behind Glen Canyon Dam, it was hoped that tinkering with flows may help to redistribute sediment to aid in fish recovery.
It was also hoped that efforts to reposition sediment would help to stabilize archeological sites disturbed by dam operations. The paper states that their experience now is that there would be exposure of some cultural sites no matter how the water is managed.
In 1994 the Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that the Bureau of Reclamation not peruse the Modified Low Fluctuating Flows, but what were called Seasonally Adjusted Steady flows. These flows would have caused releases from Glen Canyon Dam to more mimic the Colorado River's flow, which historically has ranged from 500 to more than 100,000 cubic feet per second. But since such flows would have further compromised hydropower revenue, they were opposed by the Bureau of Reclamation ten years ago, and are absent from the discussion in this new draft paper.
"Nothing that the Bureau of Reclamation had expected to achieve when it began its recovery program a decade ago has worked," adds Lammers. "This latest information adds to the mounting evidence mandating the Bureau of Reclamation to undertake a new Environmental Impact Statement on how and if Glen Canyon Dam should continue to be operated so as to comply with federal environmental laws."
Living Rivers/Colorado Riverkeeper and more than 200 groups from across the country are calling for a new Environmental Impact Statement that evaluates the decommissioning of Glen Canyon Dam as the most effective means to restore the natural process necessary to reverse the decline of endangers species in Grand Canyon.
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EVIDENCE FOR THE FAILURE OF THE MODIFIED LOW FLUCTUATING FLOW ALTERNATIVE (MLFFA) TO BENEFIT MOST ECOLOGICAL RESOURCES IN GRAND CANYON [96k PDF File]
