River Floods Again

Sun., Nov. 16, 1997

Grand Canyon

Federal officials opened the floodgates at Glen Canyon Dam last week, sending a cascade of water into the Grand Canyon to restore beaches along the Colorado River.

The man-made flood is smaller than a similar one in the spring of 1996 but has the same purpose: stirring up sediment and replacing beaches and sandbars which have eroded under the steady trickle of water released by the Glen Canyon Dam, which is upstream of the Grand Canyon.

Some of the sand and sediment stirred up by the 1996 flood has washed away again, and heavy spring rains this year brought more than a million tons of sediment into the canyon just below the dam. Officials wanted to flood the canyon and create new beaches and sandbars before all of that new sediment washed downstream into Lake Mead.

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