11/27/2023 0 Comments Stretch zone powell![]() Not until my 20s, when I began working as a river guide, did I learn about the reservoir’s ruinous backstory. Surrounded by water, bare stone and a sky on fire, I felt as if I’d landed on an alien planet. The night bristled with a sense of mystery, smelling of far-off rain and buzzing with the grownups’ concern. Finally, they decided it had to be the northern lights, visible from unusually far south. A forest fire, perhaps? But there was no forest nearby to burn. ![]() Sunset had already passed the adults talked among themselves, wondering what had caused the sky to glow. ![]() Suddenly, the entire northern sky turned molten red. One evening, as we made camp, thunderstorms roamed the desert, booming in the distance. Lake Powell showed me a sandstone desert shaped like soft-serve ice cream - the sensuous heart of the Colorado Plateau. I was a Sonoran Desert boy from the Phoenix area, where my landmarks were tall cactus and snaggletooth mountains. When we anchored, I ran barefoot across naked sandstone, unaware that the rising waters would soon cover it. I had no idea why there was so much water here I knew nothing of the dam downstream. I remember a landscape composed of three bold swaths, like a tricolor flag: the bright blue of the sky, the hard, voluptuous curves of the earth, and the unfathomable blue of the water. My dad and his friends rented a houseboat, and as they motored up the lake’s San Juan Arm - the drowned final stretch of the San Juan River - I sat on the bow with my bare feet dangling, my toes splitting the dreamlike panorama of reflected cliffs. I FIRST VISITED LAKE POWELL in the 1970s, when I was in grade school and the new reservoir was still filling up. All this may succeed in maintaining Lake Powell at its current diminished level - if only for the time being. If the reservoir can no longer release adequate amounts of water from the upper reaches of the Colorado, downstream water rights could be rendered meaningless. If reservoir levels fall as dramatically this year as they did last year, the hydropower system - which supplies seven states - will fail. Red plastic drinking cups, some bearing names scrawled in Sharpie, have yellowed to the color of piano ivory.Īt its low point last year, Lake Powell’s surface was only 32 feet above operating levels for Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower intakes, reducing the dam’s power output by half. On Lake Powell’s new shoreline, old boat propellers lie in the dust along with scads of sunglasses. An increasingly arid climate, high demand from thirsty agriculture, and the bad math embedded in the century-old compact that divides the Colorado River’s water have shrunk the two reservoirs to levels not seen since they were first filling. Lake Powell, like its downstream neighbor Lake Mead, stands at a quarter of its full capacity. The depth of the surrounding bay has dropped from about 200 feet to 35 feet, and only one of the boat ramps is still operable. The official reason for its 2021 closure was “significant wind damage and low water conditions.” The cove it once occupied is disappearing, turning back into land as the lake levels fall. Now, its outer doors hang half-open the interpretive displays bleach in the sun. Dangling Rope Marina, the size of a couple of convenience stores, once sold 1.5 million gallons of gas every year, powering the hundreds of boats that, on any given summer day, plied the watery pleasure garden of Lake Powell. Cooler doors stand open - the marina was once known for its ice cream - and conduits hang from ceilings, wires stripped.Īny restoration might look like this at the start, might exude the strange ugliness of decay. A marina that once floated in a cove has been towed out of the shrinking lake and dropped in a field of Russian thistle, its metal pontoons partially sunk into dry, crack-crazed soil.
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