The region's climate change is illustrating how irrelevant Lake Powell reservoir is for water storage, and the dam's mounting impacts on Grand Canyon's Colorado River ecosystem are becoming more devastating.

Congress is poised to take-up this legislation again and your help is needed now to ensure that federal studies on the future of Glen Canyon Dam can proceed unencumbered.

PLEASE CALL AND WRITE your representatives in Congress

Urge them to support an amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill, to negate the language that bans the use of federal funds to study the decommissioning of Glen Canyon Dam.

POINT OUT THAT:

• Climatic changes in the Colorado River watershed reinforce the need for evaluating more efficient water storage options. The 24 million acre-feet that Lake Powell has stored for the present drought came with a cost of 40 million acre-feet of Colorado River water lost to evaporation and seepage since Glen Canyon Dam was built. This is valuable water that could be used by the environment and communities in the states of Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico. We need to explore other ways to store water and create energy. Storing this same water in underground aquifers, a strategy proliferating across the southwest, has a 99 percent recovery rate. 

  Glen Canyon Dam is wasting valuable water. It's time to evaluate the dam's decommission so this water can be efficiently managed.

• The dam blocks the flow of the Colorado River killing Grand Canyon National Park's famed river ecosystem below the dam. This damage continues despite more than $200 million invested in federal efforts to alter Glen Canyon Dam operations in an attempt to comply with the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act.

  Studies must be allowed to evaluate the dam's decommissioning as a principle option for saving the Grand Canyon.

• Sediment accumulation in the reservoir is steadily reducing the storage capacity and will eventually lead to failure of the dam, spillway erosion and collapse.

  The cost of managing this sediment must be addressed.

  TO CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE For your REPRESENTATIVE'S specific contact information: phone, fax, address and email you can call the Capitol Switchboard (202) 225-1904 or go to the House on-line look-up page.

  TO CONTACT YOUR SENATOR For your senator's specific contact information: phone, fax, address and email you can call the Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121 or go to the Senate's on-line look-up page.

  Also send copies to:
  Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
  U.S. Department of the Interior
  1849 C. Street NW
  Washington, DC 20240
  Phone: (202) 208-7351
  Fax: (202) 208 6956
  Email: exsec@ios.doi.gov
  Or visit the Department of the Interior's contact page

  THE LANGUAGE WHICH SHOULD BE OMITTED from the upcoming Interior Appropriations Bill.

  No funds appropriated for the Department of the Interior by this Act or any other Act shall be used to study or implement any plan to drain Lake Powell or to reduce the water level of the lake below the range of water levels required for the operation of the Glen Canyon Dam.

  SAMPLE LETTER

  Dear Representative xxx
  Dear Senator xxx
  

  Please support eliminating, from the Interior Appropriations Bill, the ban to study Glen Canyon Dam decommissioning.

  Please support an amendment to negate this ban so that the government can seek the best solutions for conserving precious Colorado River water and restoring critical river habitat in Grand Canyon National Park as called for in the Grand Canyon Protection Act.

  The present drought situation reveals that Lake Powell reservoir is not the most efficient means for storing surplus Colorado River water. This drought is also coinciding with mounting evidence that the department of Interior's decade-long program to mitigate the impacts of Glen Canyon Dam on the resources within Grand Canyon National Park has been a failure. To aid in developing sound water use policy in the Colorado watershed, its critical that Congress allow the re-examination of how and if Glen Canyon Dam should remain operational.

  Save Water for the Colorado's Future

  Diverting water and storing it in underground aquifers represents the foundation for efficient Colorado River water storage, and should be vigorously pursued. It has become clear that above ground reservoir storage in the hot, arid desert is wasting vast amounts of precious water to evaporation. In addition the porous sandstone absorbs a lot of water that is not retrievable. We need to utilize underground storage in the places already proven feasible. Underground water banking programs can achieve up to 99 percent efficiency as compared to the 38 percent experienced with Lake Powell.

  Assure Grand Canyon's Recovery

  Since the 1992 passage of the Grand Canyon Protection Act more than $200 million has been spent on mitigation efforts, but it isn't working. Glen Canyon Dam continues to devastate Grand Canyon's ecosystem

  The failure of this program to meet the goals of the Act was documented in the 2002 Bureau of Reclamation Report to Congress: Operations of Glen Canyon Dam Pursuant to the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992. More recent results of scientific studies evaluating the Adaptive Management Plan have been even more disappointing. A review of their efforts to recover the endangered humpback Chub revealed that the Chub are spiraling toward extinction, declining by an average of 14 percent each year. We've already lost four of the eight fish species in Grand Canyon's river corridor and otters, muskrats, reptiles, insects and plants. It is critical that we now seek mechanisms that will actually comply with the Grand Canyon Protection Act.

  Sediment Problems

  Sediment accumulation in the reservoir is steadily reducing storage capacity and will eventually lead to failure of the dam, spillway erosion and collapse. In fact a high flow event occurring via monsoon or rapid snow melt could cause dam failure and disaster by moving the now high and dry exposed sediment, and the sediment in tributaries and depositing all of it at the face of the dam.

  The cost of managing this sediment has not been addressed, nor have the effects of the absence of sediment in the Grand Canyon ecosystem been thoroughly analyzed. This too needs to be understood as we look toward a sustainable path for Arizona's water management.

  As with the 84th Congress which allowed the creativity to design what was then felt optimal for Colorado River water management, so too must the 110th Congress allow federal water resource planners the same flexibility in guiding the Colorado's future. The public is ill served by banning analysis that could vastly improve both water storage efficiency on the Colorado, and a restored Grand Canyon river ecosystem.

  Sincerely,

  Your name and address

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  Last Update: October 30, 2007