n November 6, 1996, NAU's Cline Library hosted Grand Canyon: The Next Century of Change, a book signing and series of presentations. The Daily Sun reported that “(a)bout 100, most of them middle-aged scientists who looked suspiciously like recovering hippies and river rats, showed up.”
US Geological Survey authors Bob Webb, Ted Melis, and Michael Collier autographed their latest publications—Grand Canyon: A Century of Change; When the Blue-Green Waters Turn Red: Historical Flooding in Havasu Creek, Arizona; and Dams and Rivers: A Primer on the Downstream Effects of Dams. Presentations by the authors and Dave Wegner and Larry Stevens of Glen Canyon Environmental Studies, Lew Steiger of Grand Canyon River Guides, and Tom Moody of Grand Canyon Trust followed. Here are some excerpts of their talks that night.
Karen Underhill, NAU Cline Library, Special Collections and Archives, opened with a dedication of the proceedings to P.T. “Pat” Reilly, Canyon and River historian, who “ran the last rapid” the prior month. Many current researchers had conferred with Reilly concerning his record of the River in pre-dam days, and Webb and Melis have used P.T.'s visual images extensively in their rephotographic work. Underhill compared the Grand Canyon to the three elements in the classic definition of an archives: “It is a physical place, which is unsurpassed in beauty. It offers natural materials which document the development of our world, literally from the day the earth cooled until the present, and manufactured materials which chronicle human history. Last but not least, an assortment of programs have been established with the mission of preserving this treasure for humankind.”

Bob Webb

When you look through these books of old photographs, you look at them with some longing, with some history. You could almost walk inside those photos and be there. As much as I would like to go back into those old photos, and as much as I would like to say that we could recreate that Grand Canyon, we cannot. If we took that dam away, we wouldn't get back what's in those photographs. We'd get back something different; a hybrid of things. We'd have bigger sand bars, but the tamarisk would still be there; and we'd not get back those endangered fish, for example. We need to live with what we've got. We have a major hydroelectric structure across this river. We can't let this structure be operated the way it has in the past, where there's absolutely no concern with what's going on downstream. My vision of Grand Canyon, fifty or one hundred years from now, is, in order to get certain things back, in order to stabilize the system that has certain values that we all appreciate as part of one of the premier national parks in this country, we're going to need to do several things: more frequent floods through the Grand Canyon; we need to put some sediment back into the river, and we need to think about how to do that. So, we're going to have to go beyond and modify some of the ways that the dam is being operated and some of the structural elements of it. But at least we can have some of the things back that those old timers experienced.

Ted Melis

The tributaries impose greater control on this river than nature did before the dam or than man does after the dam. Each debris flow that occurs now from these tributaries has a greater impact on the mainstem than it ever did before. The challenge is to think about the future in a global climate change environment, where debris flows are occurring more frequently than ever before, a regulated river that is no longer able to modify those rapids and flush away that material, and what are the long-term effects on the ecosystem: mainstem productivity, fisheries habitat, sediment storage. I maintain that in a hundred years we may not recognize this river at all because it's so absolutely changed by these debris flows, that until very recently nobody paid much attention to. We may see radical changes in the sediment inputs from the Paria and the LCR to such an extent that portions of Marble Canyon would be blocked by silt bars that would make it difficult to boat. This would fly in the face of everything that we've come to think of in terms of Marble Canyon being sediment (deprived). That could change in a few years to a decade as we move into another erosional cycle. There was something different going on in the Colorado River drainage in the late 19th century/early 20th century, and whatever that was, whatever was driving it, whether it was human impact or climate, seemed to abruptly end sometime around 1940. I maintain that could turn around again tomorrow, it could turn around again in twenty years, in fifty years, and we could have a totally different system modified by tributary inputs alone, regardless of human impacts and regulation by the dam.

Dave Wegner

Dams and natural river ecosystems do not mix! Rivers are dynamic and vibrant environments that flow with the intrinsic power of life, are the arteries that define and support the tapestry of the landscape itself. Rivers are not meant to be man constrained, choked, or limited in their ability to respond to the dynamic environment that gave birth to them. Dams fragment the rivers to a point that now entire ecosystems and species are either threatened of lost. This is wrong. It is somewhat ironic, but without science and without data we could not prove the obvious. Dams, while temporarily good for humans, spell doom and destruction for the natural and dynamic nature of rivers. Science and scientists must be active parts of the future management of the Colorado River. These authors and their books provide the ability to enlist you, the public, in making the scientific voice heard above the bureaucracy and the bull shit. Scientists must speak up.

Michael Collier

I think that in years to come we're going to realize that one of the best results that the flood of ‘96 had was on other rivers beyond the Grand Canyon. Each river is different: Platte River, Rio Grande, Snake River, Green River. The science that has come out of the Grand Canyon in the last thirteen years, or the Steve Carothers years before that, will go beyond just Grand Canyon. Taking an intelligent look at not just the single use of generating electricity or creating floods will call for a set of prioritizations that are difficult to make, but worthwhile to attempt. I'd like to finish with one paragraph out of my publication on dams and rivers:
We should not confuse the role of scientists with those of engineers or politicians. Nevertheless, no one works in a vacuum. Our ideas and observations will be put to test, not just in the rarefied atmosphere of academic science, but integrated into the very real world that runs according to cost per kilowatt-hour, water rights, and mandated protection of the natural environment. Scientists dealing with the downstream effects of dams—at levels ranging from basic research to applied engineering—must formulate questions whose answers can ultimately make a difference. To strive for anything less is to be just another bureaucrat.

Lew Steiger

We ought to come up with a better way to manage the flow of people. The biggest heartbreak is that the user-day system—how we count heads and decide who gets to go down there—isn't ideal; it was designed for different circumstances. When we start looking at Grand Canyon in century-sized bites, from Stanton to today is a pretty big increase in river traffic. The traffic of humans, when I try to look ahead to 2096, I just wonder if the system we have right now in place this instant is adequate to the task.
We all, collectively, would do well to address that side of things in the very near future, when the Colorado River Management Plan comes up for review. What do we do with the user-day system? What about wilderness designation for as much of the Canyon as possible? What do we do about overall traffic into the next century? Thinking about those thorny and very different issues now is the least we can do, just for all the people and all the living things that will be following in our footsteps.
What's cool is making the mental leap, when I think about Grand Canyon characters—when I think about Robert Brewster Stanton and what he knew and what he dreamed of when he started and then to make that leap and coming all that incredibly long and comic and tragic and occasionally inspiring way that we've come as a culture to arrive in this room tonight... I think it's cause for a fair share of optimism where the future is concerned, too.

Tom Moody

One term we use for far-reaching looks into the future is ‘vision;' for visions give us more than simply a prediction of future events, they give us a target on which to aim, a path to follow. They do more than forecast the future: they influence it, giving hope, inspiration, and guidance to those who embrace it; they look past what we can reasonably infer from our knowledge of the past and of the present. I suggest that we consider such a vision for the Colorado River forty years in the future.
The year is 2036 and it's spring. The Colorado River is raging by, and it's very different from what we see today. The twin vectors of economics and environment, that historically conflict, have now come together along a similar path. The consequence is that the quality of life long measured in economic terms in now also measured in the state of the environment that surrounds society. A high value has been placed on free-flowing rivers and natural ecosystems and restoration efforts on river systems are under way all around the country. Concurrently, rising environmental consequences of controlled rivers has radically changed the cost/benefit ratio of these large dams. There are no more large dams on the Colorado River. The flood is about 130,000 cubic feet per second, the largest in 40 years; and there are thousands who have come to see it. People up and down the river are rejoicing, celebrating the anticipated good and bountiful harvest from the sediments that will be deposited on the flood plains that they now farm. The flood is expected to recharge aquifers throughout the basin. Thousands of tons of sediment accumulating in Glen Canyon are also heading downstream to redeposit upon the beaches in Grand Canyon and beyond. The river is in balance.
A remote possibility? Possibly, but not unlikely. This represents a departure, but the power of a vision lies in the fact that the future is composed of more than simply a progression of the past and present. One of the things that we carry to other river systems is an understanding that all things will change. Guides on the river watched the fluctuating clear, cold water move past with no hint, no clue, no hope that these things could change. But it did. It was not an easy task, but fundamental changes have taken place in the operations of Glen Canyon Dam and our outlook on the river. There's no reason to believe that it's not going to continue.
Forty years is actually a long time to look ahead. Stanton could not have visualized Boulder Dam being completed in 1933. In 1923, few could have visualized Glen Canyon Dam. Whether or not the vision presented this evening comes to pass, the future of the Colorado River will be very different from what we see today. Its shape depends more on decisions that lie before us than on those that lie behind.

Larry Stevens

Unfortunately, (pre-Glen Canyon Dam) photographs do not show us how much the Colorado River's aquatic food base and fish had already changed by A.D. 1900. By 1911, carp and catfish dominated the lower Colorado River. Spencer Johnson reported that Colorado squawfish runs ceased at Lees Ferry in 1929, as construction began on Hoover Dam. Introduction of non-native plants, such as tamarisk, altered the vegetation assemblage in the 1920's.
The 1995 EIS resolved the value of Glen Canyon Dam to society. Despite recent, well-intended discussions about draining Lake Powell and dismantling the dam, you and I and 34,000 other members of the American public decided through that EIS process to maintain and operate Glen Canyon Dam in perpetuity, while simultaneously trying to improve the integrity of the downstream ecosystem. I think most of the world wants this to be a healthy, appropriately functioning ecosystem, one which supports its unique species and physical processes. However, the public is largely ignorant of the extent of ecological changes, and of the dangers associated with trying to return to the pristine condition.
I suggest that management of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon for the pristine, “natural” condition is inappropriate: 1) we know little of the pre-dam food webs and native fisheries; 2) the basic process of flow frequency, sediment transport, and temperature variation have been interrupted by upstream dams; 3) the post-dam river supports many new and valued populations of native species; and 4) (even though) the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, along with Cataract Canyon, provide the only large reaches of the Colorado River system that can serve as scientific controls against which to measure change in the Grand Canyon, the native fish in those reaches are in serious trouble—Glen Canyon Dam may well be protecting the remaining native fish in Grand Canyon from intense competitive pressures from warm-water native species. Also, tamarisk and other non-native plant populations are actively reproducing along the lower Green River, while the tamarisk population along the mainstream in Grand Canyon is largely in a decadent, nonreproducing condition.
Thus, management of the Colorado River for its “natural” condition is not possible, it is not best, and it is not feasible. Pursuit of the “manage-for-natural” strategy in Grand Canyon is blind romanticism that can only further damage the integrity of the remaining river ecosystem, and will further threaten regional biodiversity.
I am not in favor of dams on rivers. However, nearly all rivers in this country are regulated, and it is time we began assessing the long-term economic and environmental costs of these ecological alterations. There is no return to the mythological pristine condition, but there can be sensible management of existing resources and landscapes to preserve that which remain.

C.V. Abyssus

Contact Diane Grua, Cline Library Special Collections and Archives, to view a videotape of the presentations.