he long awaited, acclaimed, denounced and ever so controversial flood of Grand Canyon actually began on schedule. At 6:15 am on March 26th, a crowd of dignitaries, rabble rousers and a small media circus watched and listened as Bruce Babbitt cranked open the first of four hollow jet valves that, by noon, would send the river to 45,000 cfs for a week. Babbitt spoke of a new beginning for the Colorado, a system-wide type of management, and the interlinking of multiple fields of study, systems and species in a new, more holistic approach. The flood rushes on as we go to press.
That’s the first flood; the one that was planned. The one that wasn’t expected was the media frenzy. As the date grew nearer, more and stories began to appear in the press, one building upon another, facts and fiction blurring as the great moment approached. Outside magazine may have reached the acme of yellow journalism in its April issue.
“The Colorado River as you’ve never seen it… Whitewater of biblical proportions… Hydraulic wedges will heave against the massive steel gate that holds back Lake Mead [sic]… as the Colorado River… marauds through, rolling boulders as if they were Easter eggs and ripping trees from banks. A week later the river will be switched back to “low,” where it’s been since the dam was built in 1963.
“But perhaps no one is more thrilled about the coming flood than a handful of Top-Gun-caliber whitewater rafters, who in the last few decades have grown accustomed to a kinder gentler stream… access will be tightly controlled—with amateurs strictly forbidden unless they’re part of a scientific team or booked on one of the seven scheduled raft trips.”

And much, much more. It’s hard to imagine packing more misinformation into five short paragraphs. Somehow much of the media has mistaken where the significance of the flood flow lies. 45,000 is about half the average pre-dam high. That’s what it ran for much of the three years following the onset of the 1983 unintentional flood—at one point more than doubling that amount. It’s not really all that high. Many river hazards disappear at that level while a few others, notably Crystal, get worse. Boils and swirlies appear, tossing boats around, sucking tubes. But really, it’s not that big a deal. Cataract Canyon boaters see bigger stuff on a pretty regular basis. Some 14 private and 6 commercial launches were on the schedule to ride the tide.
Nonetheless, GCRG and many outfitters are getting waves of calls from panicked passengers fearing for their very lives. The media has done its job well.
The real significance of the flood, the cresting high point, is administrative. “Valuable” water—water that could otherwise be sent through turbines and produce revenue—is bypassing the cash register for the simple purpose of attempting to benefit the downstream environment. With tremendous pressures from water and power interests not to by-pass the turbines, desires from sediment scientists to have the flood even higher, urging from fishermen and some other recreationists to keep it low—the GCES process has actually been able to pull it off. Comparing this to the massive dysfunction in Washington these days, it is an astounding and newsworthy feat.

Will the flood work? That remains to be seen.
The third spring flood was a rubber armada of scientists, heading downstream to assess the effects. Their measurements and observations will take a while to analyze. Meanwhile, we, the guides, will have a tremendous opportunity to see the immediate and long-term effects and add our observations to the body of knowledge. Both the Adopt-A-Beach program of repeat photographs of certain beaches, and the observations we are asking for in the centerfold of this issue, will add a tremendous amount to the information gained from the experiment. So get out there, look around, and try to describe the changes you see. And write it down.

Brad Dimock