Fw: [shadow_group] Fw: Drought shrinking jewels of the desert

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

To: shadow_group<mailto:shadow_group at lists.riseup.net> 
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 10:02 PM
Subject: [shadow_group] Fw: Drought shrinking jewels of the desert



----- Original Message ----- 
Subject: Drought shrinking jewels of the desert


USAToday.com

Drought shrinking jewels of the desert
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
WAHWEAP, Ariz. - The ramp here for launching boats into Lake Powell is a
magnificent example of the art of concrete. It slopes at just the right
angle for slipping a boat off a trailer and into the water. Its surface
is grooved to keep tires from skidding.
 
  Low lake levels, such as the one at Lake Powell, have kept away
visitors, which has hurt towns reliant on tourism.  
By David McNew, Getty Images 

There's only one problem: Until very recently, the ramp didn't reach the
water.

Lake Powell is enormous, but five years of drought have sapped it badly.
It's less than half full and down 130 feet. And so the launch ramp at
Wahweap, a lakeside resort, ended on dry land.

The lake level is still falling - 21 inches a week. So the National Park
Service, which extended the ramp 300 feet in 2003, extended it again this
month. "Chasing the water," park service staffers call it. The ramp now
reaches the lake once more. 

Lake Powell is not the only lake that's shriveling. The epic drought that
has gripped the West for the last five years has choked off the water
supply to lakes from California to Montana to New Mexico. As a result,
many lakes, which water officials call reservoirs, haven't been so low
since the 1970s or earlier. Their recovery will take years.

"Many of these reservoirs are at levels that haven't been seen for
decades, if ever," says Don Wilhite, director of the National Drought
Mitigation Center. Meanwhile, the population of the West "has exploded.
.. It just makes everything really, really bleak."

The consequences are direr than just inconvenience for boaters. Low lake
levels have kept away visitors, which has hurt towns reliant on tourism.
Shrinking lakes have robbed farmers of irrigation water. And for some
city dwellers, disappearing lakes spell dead lawns and high water costs.

Nearly every corner of the West has been stricken: 

 Bear Lake in Utah and Idaho hasn't been so low since 1935. Irrigation
water to local farmers had to be shut off early, threatening the loss of
crops.

 Lake Mead in Nevada has dropped nearly 100 feet, twice the height of
the White House. The ruins of St. Thomas, a town flooded by the lake's
creation 70 years ago, have emerged from the receding waters.

 Lake Arrowhead in California is lower than it's been since records
began in 1921. People who get their water from the lake have had to cut
their water use by 25% and pay high fees to build new wells and systems
for recycling water.

But none of the lakes in the West is grander, more important or more
disputed than Lake Powell. 

The second-largest manmade lake in the USA after Mead, Lake Powell spills
into both Utah and Arizona. It's 186 miles long, or at least it was when
it was full.

Creation of the lake required plugging the Colorado River with the giant
Glen Canyon Dam. That inundated more than 100 miles of the river and
nearly 200 miles of side canyons.

Today Powell gets most of its water from the Colorado River, which flows
into the lake's northern end. The river flows out of the lake at its
southern end and eventually empties into Lake Mead.

Even today, after five years of drought, Powell is an enormous expanse of
sapphire in the beige desert. But the most casual first-time visitor here
will notice that something is out of whack.

A "bathtub ring" of white minerals stains the cliffs around the lake,
marking how high the water once reached. New islands have appeared where
maps don't show any. Areas that were lake bottom a year ago are now
beaches.

The dropping water level is a constant headache for those who manage
tourist facilities. One marina is now so far from the water that
officials have closed it indefinitely. The park service and Aramark, the
contractor that runs the park's marinas and hotels, have had to pour new
parking lots and move a fuel dock.

The park service has spent $5 million in the last two years to
accommodate the shrinking lake, spokeswoman Char Obergh says. Aramark has
spent at least $1 million.

"If we'd invested in a concrete company, Char and I would've been able to
retire," Aramark spokesman Steve Ward jokes.

Powell isn't the only lake where dropping water levels have left boating
facilities landlocked. At Fort Peck Lake in Montana, the lake is at the
lowest level since it was filled in the 1930s. Now four of the lake's 11
boat ramps don't reach the water. 

At Powell, 2 million people a year water ski, fish and chug around on
houseboats. It's still possible to enjoy those pleasures. But it's not as
easy as it was.

That lesson was learned firsthand by Jim and Susan Ferguson of Redlands,
Calif., who are putting their boat in the lake at Wahweap on a hot
afternoon.

They were motoring across the lake earlier in the day and "hit something
I couldn't see," Jim Ferguson says. He thinks it was a concrete beam that
in past years was deeply submerged.

The couple spent $100 and nearly all day getting their boat fixed. Still,
Jim Ferguson says that the low water means "fewer boats on the lake,
which is (a) good thing."

Later in the day, Arbetee and Quita Allen of Cerritos, Calif., stand on
the Wahweap ramp with their boat on its trailer. They're casting a wary
eye on the mud between the ramp's end and the water. 

"We're debating if we should go or not," Quita Allen says. "Who's going
to pull us out if we get stuck?"

"I just wanted to see what I'll be up against," Arbetee Allen adds. They
soon launch without incident.

At least the Fergusons and the Allens didn't stay home. In April, rumors
spread that the lake had dried up. Tourism plummeted.

That created havoc in Page, Ariz., the town closest to the lake. Page's
economy depends almost entirely on tourists. The decline in visitors led
companies to lay off employees, hire fewer seasonal workers than usual
and slash their prices.

At Outdoor Sports, a boat sales and rental company in Page, business was
down in 2003 and down even more in 2004, manager Tina Schmidt says. 

"Most people didn't even take their boats out" this year, Schmidt says.
"A lot of people are going to sell their boats because they don't think
the lake is going to be here. ... It's really frustrating."

Other towns that depend on lakes for revenue are also suffering. At
Elephant Butte Lake, N.M., tourism has dried up along with the lake. In
the nearby city of Elephant Butte, some businesses that cater to tourists
have closed. Jerry Jordan, who operates Buddy's Boat & RV Storage,
estimates that spending has dropped 20% to 25%.

"Without the lake, there isn't much point in having the town," Jordan
says.

That's also true of Page, which is anxiously awaiting the winter weather
reports. The lake normally refills in the spring with melting snow from
the Rocky Mountains.

But snowfall has been light the last five winters. That - not increased
demand for water - is the reason Powell has dwindled.

Even if normal snowfall resumes, it will take at least 12 years for
Powell to fill up. That's because moisture will soak into the dry soil
rather than running into the lake.

Amid all the unhappiness about Powell's disappearing act is one group of
people grinning broadly: environmentalists.

Environmentalist Richard Ingebretsen is full of joyful expectation as he
sits in a powerboat slipping into a hushed grotto.

"This is it," Ingebretsen says in a hushed voice. "This is the famous
Cathedral in the Desert."

The "cathedral" is a chamber with curving rock walls colored rose and
gray. A strip of blue sky is visible overhead. Opposite the entrance, a
waterfall flows down the cliff in a ribbon of white spray.

For decades the lake filled the chamber nearly to the ceiling. The
waterfall was submerged, the room itself nearly unrecognizable. Now that
the lake has fallen, the chamber is visible once more.

Up and down the lake, alcoves and valleys that have been inundated since
the 1960s and 70s are re-emerging. Grasses carpet newly dry canyons and
cottonwood trees sprout in the mud. Ingebretsen is jubilant about the
return of scenery lost when the lake formed.

"It's heartwarming," he says. "A place once gone is restored."

Ingebretsen, who heads an environmental group called the Glen Canyon
Institute, and his allies are using the drought to bolster their
audacious goal: to drain the lake. 

"Should we re-flood this?" Ingebretsen asks as he sits in the Cathedral
of the Desert. "Because we don't have to."

That contention is based on how water is doled out in the arid West.

Powell's main purpose is to serve as a backup water tank. In a drought,
water released from Powell helps fill Lake Mead, which supplies water to
18 million people. Lake Powell thus helps ensure that faucets in
California, Nevada and Arizona don't go dry. 

Environmentalists note that Lake Mead seldom needs extra water from Lake
Powell. They also say that extra water should be stored somewhere other
than Powell, because Powell loses huge amounts of water to evaporation. 

Steve Ward of Aramark and others strongly disagree. They argue that
there's nowhere else to store the amount of water banked in Lake Powell.
Without the lake, they say, the West as we know it could not have
developed.

"If we could go back to the 1940s, I would say, don't build this dam,"
Ward says. "But my next statement is, two wrongs don't make a right. It
would be disastrous to remove this dam."

The dam's supporters say that removing it would be the death of Page and
other small towns that survive off tourists visiting Powell. Dam removal
would also make the water supply to cities from Los Angeles to Phoenix
more precarious, unless Powell was replaced with other reservoirs.

For the moment, removal of the dam on Lake Powell is unlikely. But the
choices the West faces are real.

Cities and towns in at least nine Western states get their water from
lakes. If the drought continues, managers will have to cut back. State
officials are talking about restricting the amount of water that flows
from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, which would lower Mead's level even more.

Federal water officials say that the West's water supply is vulnerable
even without a drought and the resulting low lake levels. So the extreme
drought now in progress could force some tough decisions.

"If the drought continues on its existing trend ... there will be (water
users) that will go without," warns Bennett Raley, assistant secretary of
the Interior for water and science. "And there will be very serious
consequences from that."

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/shadowgroup-l/attachments/20041002/ea6c4380/attachment.html>