Looking Up at the Water Line: The Story of Permanent Water LossWritten in the Cliffs

By Ron Prosek

The year before COVID struck, 2019, my wife Judy and I took our last long vacation. We were in Utah and Arizona to visit six of the national parks in the region. One of the most striking sites we visited was Lake Powell and its Glen Canyon Dam, a massive 710-foot-high structure on the Colorado River.

Besides creating a large reservoir for the region, the dam and its

hydroelectric generating plant provides electric power to seven western

states. The massive structure of the dam is quite an impressive sight,

especially as seen from the surface of Lake Powell.

We boarded the tour boat with about fifty other people on a hot dry day. 

Most stayed on the top deck, figuring we could get the best views that way. 

But it was really hot up there! Eventually, we migrated to the enclosed

lower deck which was air conditioned. To our surprise, the views from the

lower deck were quite good due to the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The tour on Lake Powell included many wide open areas, but more than

half of our tour took us through winding canyons. Not a surprise as Lake

Powell is actually a dammed and flooded region of the Colorado River.

As our tour boat approached the canyon walls that towered about 500-600

feet or more above us, we noticed an interesting divide in the color of the

canyon walls. From the water's surface to about a third of the way up the

walls the color was white. Then above that, the remainder of the walls were

a brownish orange.  

We asked our tour guide what this meant. He explained that where the

white section ended, about one-third up the wall, was where the water line

used to be. That's how far drawn down the water level of Lake Powell is

now from its maximum level. It looked like a shocking loss of water. That

was in 2019.

About three years later we learned that the water level had declined so

much, engineers feared that the hydro generators soon might be unable to

function.

Of course, this is the story of the American West--mostly desert conditions.

Natural historians report that this is the normal condition of the West and

that during the colonization of the West by White Europeans, the West was

undergoing an unusually wet time. But that time has ended, and things are

back to normal. And dry is the normal condition of this region.

Yet, major cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles depend on the

Colorado River as do the farmlands in the region. The Colorado River

Compact, established in 1922, regulates the sharing of the water from the

Colorado among seven states--Colorado, Utah, Montana, New Mexico,

Nevada, Arizona, and California. A key component of the Colorado River

Compact is set to expire at the end of this year. This component is called

the 2007 Interim Guidelines.

More negotiations will have to resolve the competing interests among the

states involved and with Mexico. What will be the result? Clearly, everyone,

all parties involved will have to figure out how to function with less water. I

doubt that lawn watering bans in Phoenix will be enough to solve the

shortages. This is going to have to involve drastic changes in city

operations and agricultural practices.

But those of us in the Great Lakes, the Midwest generally, or in the Mid-

Atlantic region, should not be complacent. We may think we have plenty of

water, but what good is water that is polluted by oil and gas drilling and

migrating frack waste underground? Just remember the millions of gallons

of water used in fracking becomes so contaminated that it is lost forever. 

The wastewater from these operations are loaded with toxic chemicals and

radioactive material. And, if these toxic and radioactive fluids seep into our

aquifers, those sources of water for millions will also be lost forever.