Discuss: Calamity on the Colorado

Yey, can hardly wait to see that monster come down. I hate that damn dam. Long live Hayduke. Take it down now!!

Wow, a sobering reminder of how short our vision can be. 

Respect and learn from nature and the forces of this world, or learn to regret it.

Well written, thank you.

Despite the concerns of a few, as a nation we still still work under the flawed, and eventually fatal assumption, that growth is good. Describing “behind the scenes” details, as this article does so well, helps spread the good word.

Might Lake Powell not just fill up with silt and become a marsh with a river running through it, one that then flows over the edge of the dam? Then it could slowly eat away at the dam and eventually we’d have a free river again, at least for that stretch?

I must admit, I love the disaster scenarios; it’s a great appeal of environmentalism for me. But I fear it will all end far less spectacularly.

Great photos in the video segment. The lack of actual research in your article, however, is astounding. At some points, your article seems to have been taken over by some evil scientist who wishes for civilization to come tumbling down. Must everything be catastrophic, to those in the media? Won’t the dam’s evolutionary process be gradual, with scientists first sounding Lake Powell for survey maps, and presenting their findings and projections to State and Federal officials? You should read “Colossus” by Michael Hiltzik if you wish to become truly familiar with how wonderful things were when the Colorado River ran freely to the Gulf of California, or cut through the desert southwest to form the Salton Sea. Desert dwellers were terrified of the Colorado River before it was harnessed. I thoroughly agree that the SW population has overwhelmed the Colorado River’s supply, but the silt angle of the story does not work. I would have preferred you focused on the need to revisit the Colorado River Treaty of 1944, to bring the allocations up to date, lowering them from the current 16.5 MAF to the real annual running average of 14.7 MAF.

What a stunning example of the limits to unsustainable development. Because those limits have been ignored, both the environment and millions of people will suffer. Of course, our legal and political system will ensure that the suffering is not distributed fairly.

Still waiting on the math, with which the author claims, will fill Lake Powell with silt.

For others who doubt, worth reading:

http://library.nau.edu/speccoll/images/text/pdf/15332.pdf

As for the use of dams, this past month showed the importance of Three Gorges Dam to the people of China, as loss of life from flooding reached close to 1,000 people and an estimated $10B plus in damage.

Those who know the history of this river, search 1954. Astounding loss of life and property.

Pakistan would certainly have liked to have a regulatory handle on their rivers this past month, as the number of people displaced by floods is now estimated to be 12 million.

Oh…but that control would take away from the beauty of a raging river. Yeah, I forgot. It’s easier to have someone like Powell make unsubstantiated statements disguised as science.