There’s Hope
By Dave Wegner
“There’s Hope.” Two words spoken on a bright March morning in Forgotten Canyon, steps from the receding waters of Lake Powell. “There’s hope,” an expression of exhilaration and gratitude at the sight of a native cottonwood tree growing in the emerging sediments. Growing in an area that several years ago was under tens of feet of reservoir water backed up by Glen Canyon Dam. The landscape of Glen Canyon is emerging and with it a new energy of restoration. There is a feeling of life emerging.
From March 28 to the 30th staff and Board Members of the Glen Canyon Institute led a group of conservationists from Arizona who wanted to explore and discuss the changes happening in the reservoir and the Colorado River Basin. The group of reservoir and river explorers spent two days on the reservoir exploring emerging tributary and main Glen Canyon sites, finding multiple areas of draining sediments, quicksand, and springs flowing out of seeps in the Navajo Sandstone and hidden tributary canyons where willows, ferns, cottonwoods, and native grasses were repopulating exposed sediments.
Evening discussions focused on the roles of stakeholders, tribes, NGOs, and scientists in the future of Colorado River management. A central topic to the tour was how climate change is creating an opportunity for the nation to have a discussion on what a climate-driven, not development-driven, future could look like for Glen Canyon. The spirits of David Brower, Katie Lee and Martin Litton were with us, and I would like to think they were smiling, perhaps with a cocktail in hand, at the discussion. Science, tenacity, engagement and speaking out about non-traditional approaches to restoring Glen Canyon have been the focus of GCI since 1996. As dinner was winding down as if on cue, a double rainbow appeared over the Colorado Plateau encouraging all of us to remain engaged.
The last day was spent with Mike DeHoff of the Returning Rapids Project on the Colorado River in Cataract Canyon. Since 2002 Lake Powell has dropped over 170 feet exposing large expanses of the Lake Powell/ Colorado River delta which continues to build and move downstream as the river drops and cuts away at the exposed sediments. The National Park Service has focused on maintaining the reservoir economy of Lake Powell through extending boat ramps and moving marinas. As the reservoir continues to recede and more river miles from the main stem Colorado, the San Juan, the Escalante, and Dirty Devil rivers begin flowing freely, there will be a much greater demand for managing the park for flowing rivers instead of a reservoir.
The issue of deposited sediments and the impacts they have caused were the focal point of a day long discussion in respect to Colorado River water management and climate change. The Seven Colorado River Basin states and the federal government are searching for ways to design future water management that focuses on meeting the requirements of Colorado River water law and the reality that the available water supply will not support past water assumptions.
“There’s hope.” Two words that embrace the change and potential for Glen Canyon. Glen Canyon will never look exactly like it did prior to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. Too many years of sediment deposition, a landscape drowned by hundreds of feet of water and large amounts of anthropocentric detritus that litters the emerging landscape. What we did see on this expedition is that Glen Canyon is resilient. Where once there was hundreds of feet of water now supports 40-foot-tall cottonwoods and healthy groves of willows. Landscapes teaming with birds, lizards, frogs, insects, and animals. Life is being restored to the canyons. With no money whatsoever spent on restoration of landscapes, Mother Nature has taken matters into her own hands and is sprouting growth and a future that shows restoration of one of the most iconic landscapes in the world can and will happen. There’s hope.
