Drain Lake Powell?

Conservation

A top Sierra Club official is proposing to drain 186-mile-long Lake Powell, saying it would save water and restore red rock desert and hundreds of spectacular slot canyons.

David Brower, former executive director of the Sierra Club, said lowering the level of the reservoir along the Utah-Arizona border makes sense economically and environmentally.

The Glen Canyon Dam, which forms the reservoir upstream from the Grand Canyon, was completed in 1963. Because the lake is so big, it causes the annual evaporative loss of 750,000 acre-feet of water, Brower said. Nevada’s Lake Mead downstream from Lake Powell stores enough water to meet the needs of water users, he said, noting that the loss of power generation from Glen Canyon Dam could be more than offset by energy-conservation measures.

Under Brower’s proposal, the dam would stay in place and would be used again only when Lake Mead filled with Colorado River silt, a process that he estimated will take 150 to 200 years. In the meantime, much of Glen Canyon - a place Brower describes as the most beautiful on Earth - would be exposed once again.