he Colorado River serves many functions for humankind; agriculture, water supply, recreation, electricity, spiritual sustenance and so on. By building dams and diversion works along its path, we have demonstrated mastery and control of the water. This control is short term, however, and will likely be relinquished in just a few generations.
The river's role in nature is geologic; it moves both water and sediment from the uplifted continental interior to the sea. Our dams can manage the water, but not the sediment. Great annual pulses of sediment will continue to move irresistibly toward the sea. All future management of the river needs to include sediment transport in the equation. If we continue to ignore this train barreling down the track toward us, then we are likely to become road kill in its path.
Consider this hypothetical future scenario; it is September 29, AD 2099. The Commissioner of Reclamation is pacing the floor, cursing those who didn't see this train wreck coming. She holds a document entitled Approaches to Basin Management, 1996. “The ideas are here; they had the knowledge, the expertise. Why didn't anyone speak up? They must have had their heads in the sand. How could they be so short sighted?” She assesses the situation...
During the past century, three multi-year wet climate cycles in the southwest have mobilized enormous amounts of sediment from thousands of small tributaries across the Colorado River basin. The effect has been to nearly double the predicted rate of sedimentation in Lake Powell. Now that the reservoir is almost half full of sediment, it can barely store the average annual flow of the river. Lake Powell is drained very low each winter in order to prevent unplanned clear-water floods from coursing through the Grand Canyon, floods which would scour the remaining sand and vegetation from the riverine habitat in this treasured National Park and World Heritage Site. The advancing sedimentary deltas of the San Juan River and local tributaries near the dam have silted-in the penstocks for the turbines. Due to greatly fluctuating lake levels, Glen Canyon Dam produces relatively small amounts of electricity and only because of the multi-level intake structure, originally built to protect the endangered native fish in Grand Canyon.

In the previous several decades, “long-term sustainability” has become the governing concept for all public works projects, and is also the new societal paradigm which replaced the old paradigm of “limitless growth”. There is little political will to support costly federal water projects. Local food production has largely replaced industrial agriculture, with its attendant high transportation and environmental costs. The once fertile agricultural valleys of the lower Colorado River have mostly returned to desert conditions due to soil salinization and water transfers to thirsty urban areas.
The Commissioner must submit a recently completed Environmental Impact Statement on reservoir operations to the Secretary of Interior by Jan. 1, 2100. It boils down to basically three alternatives:
1) let sediment continue to fill the reservoir, causing ever larger clear water floods to bypass the turbines, eventually scouring the remaining sand and vegetation from the river corridor in Grand Canyon (no action alternative),
2) initiate massive sediment slurry pumping from the reservoir into the Grand Canyon, eventually requiring slurry lines in all downstream reservoirs (highest long-term cost alternative), or
3) disassemble the dam, allowing the river to slowly re-establish its ecological and geohydrological heritage (high initial cost alternative).
The Commissioner thinks to herself...”it was inconceivable 100 years ago, but there can be only one preferred alternative, ...disassemble the dam. A large segment of the public would be very enthusiastic about the “reclamation” of Glen Canyon to its natural state, restoring what many consider to have been a lamentable loss. The Bureau of Reclamation will live up to its name. It's the bold, visionary approach. It's the politically expedient alternative. In the longer view, it's the only reasonable answer. Yes, the President may like this…”
One can argue with the details of this futuristic scenario and the solution proposed, but not the basic problem. Put your ears to the track; anyone hear a train coming? I, for one, do not wish to leave a time bomb ticking for future generations. The longer it ticks, the bigger it gets.

Andre Potochnik