Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River

“The warning here is clear. Overdevelopment of fragile, arid lands in places like the Intermountain and Desert Southwest is doomed to disaster.” 

The politicians who proposed and the engineers who designed Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam) and Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) sought to tame the Colorado River in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Together they represent the largest hydraulic project in the U.S. and generate massive amounts of hydroelectric energy for the Intermountain and West. In Powell’s case, it generates electricity for about six million people. For Mead, it serves 1.3 million users. They are also important sources of water for California, Arizona, Nevada, and northern Mexico. Without it, places like Las Vegas and Phoenix would still be sleepy desert outposts rather than major urban juggernauts.

The crux of the matter is that both of these reservoirs are dying from the effects of drought and climate change. No water equals no growth for much of the Intermountain West. These dual effects may well generate significant future out-migration, and staggering economic decline, by the mid-21st century.

In Life after Deadpool, Zak Padmore focuses on the largest of the two reservoirs—Lake Powell. He interweaves history, personal stories of outdoor adventure, and science journalism to help us understand how Powell is rapidly becoming a dead pool—a reservoir whose water level is so low that water can no longer flow downstream (and, hence, can no longer generate hydroelectric power).

While science and history form rich contextualization for the Glen Canyon Dam/Lake Powell story, it is Podmore’s animated adventures on that waterway that are truly gripping. Most noteworthy is his discussion of the deep silt that is filling in the reservoir. His description of the Colorado River delta that forms at the interface with the lake is a masterful synecdoche for the processes that will, inevitably fill in what is left of the lake. That delta is a dynamic ever-growing and ever-shifting system.

Two options face the lake: drain it and revive Glen Canyon and its riverine environment or let it silt in with mud, turning it into a dead moonscape. If the latter doesn’t sound bad enough, consider that the silt chocking the lake carries all manner of pollutants from mines, including uranium. Once the silted in lake desiccates contaminated dust will go air born with various public health risks.

For example, there are the residents of Page, Arizona, or the denizens at the ultra-expensive Amangiri resort, not to mention the Navajo living in that western section of their expansive reservation. Page and the Amangiri are all about tourist dollars ranging from humble to unimaginable. But Podmore asks what of the Navajo?

In the 1950s tribal leaders thought the dam and lake might bring much needed development that would bring water to farmers and some much-needed jobs in the tourism industry. Irrigation water never materialized, and the booming tourism industry largely bypassed the Navajo. It’s an old and oft-repeated experience of indigenous and poor people in the global tourism development business; they are mostly marginalized or obtain jobs at the low end of the tourist service industry.

The Glen Canyon Dam was built in 1963, filled to capacity in the late 1990s, and is nearing dead-pool status today. That’s a mere 61 years, which in geological time is a nanosecond, rather than the hundreds of years it was envisioned to operate. While this happened at a breakneck pace, one major takeaway is clear. All dams and their associated reservoirs have a limited shelf life.

Because of the intersection of scarce water, economic interests, and politics, it is easy to see how major dams also become major political fodder: fill Lake Powell or drain Lake Powell. That binary really leads to “do nothing.”

Measured in feet above sea level: 3,525, 3,490, and 3,370 are water levels in Lake Powell that signify (1) critical buffer elevation (28% full), (2) minimum power pool (21.8% full), and (3) dead pool (6.9% full). Policy makers never speak of decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam and diverting Lake Powell’s water through the Grand Canyon into Lake Mead in large part because it is so politically fraught.

The warning here is clear. As Podmore astutely notes, “water [is] tied to nearly every other form of monied interest in the region from real estate developers to corporate farmers . . .” Overdevelopment of fragile, arid lands in places like the Intermountain and Desert West is doomed to disaster.  

Zak Podmore makes a thoughtful and balanced argument that Lake Powell’s water should be drained and the river restored. There is abundant empirical evidence that riverine environments can quickly recover. Think here of the Los Angeles River Revitalization Project that will ultimately restore 51 miles of the river. It’s a matter of triage. Soon, dead pool is coming for Lake Powell and it is time to save the river, while we can.