In the America's with David Yetman

(David) Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, the enormous reservoir which the dam created, were once the pride of the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

But burgeoning demand from thirsty users, climate change and drought have forced a painful reevaluation of the dam and all it represents.

For some, that represents an enormous tragedy.

For others, it is an unexpected boon for the recovery of a river, a submerged canyon and a vast ecosystem.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.

(David) Glen Canyon Dam was built on the Colorado River in the renowned Four Corners region of the American Southwest.

The dam, which was completed in 1963, created Lake Powell.

It extends from Glen Canyon Dam, which is a northern Arizona well into southern Utah.

When the lake was full, the public could launch boats from several marinas located along the hundreds of miles of lake shore.

In recent years, the level of the lake has dropped dramatically, forcing closure and abandonment of most of the marinas.

One of the few that remains usable is Bullfrog Marina in Utah, towards the northern end of the lake.

I'm standing above Bullfrog Marina on the Bullfrog Arm of Upper Lake Powell in the state of Utah.

I've come here to learn about the fate of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam.

I'm lucky enough to have, as my associates here, a couple of researchers, one whose organization specializes in studies of Lake Powell and the effects of Glen Canyon Dam on the canyon, and the other who is studying the major rapids above Lake Powell in Cataract Canyon.

And the story they have to tell is going to teach me a lot and us a lot about the fate of one of the great failures in the history of the United States.

(Jack) Lake Powell and Glen Canyon are really interesting place to me personally, sort of the first big environmental fight of the modern time.

Long history is that they built a dam here in the in the fifties and early sixties that backed the water up and it drowned about 180 miles of Colorado River through Glen Canyon.

And Glen Canyon was known as kind of the heart of the plateau with hundreds of side canyons each with their own unique identity, many of which have free flowing, clear water, huge towering canyon walls, beautiful sinuous slot canyons with all sorts of vegetation and beautiful hanging gardens, cottonwood groves and the ability to recreate down here.

(David) When Lake Powell was full, when the level of the water reached the highest point on Glen Canyon Dam, the National Park Service installed marinas up and down the lake, which is 100 miles long or more.

Now the level of the lake has fallen to so low that there are only two marinas left, one near the dam and one way up at the north eastern end.

And that's where we are now finding out what happens when the level of the lake drops.

We've been on the lake now for about a couple of hours, and it's time for breakfast.

The Glen Canyon country is full of side canyons, and one of the major ones is Escalante Canyon, named after a famous Spanish explorer.

But the canyon itself, if we were to walk upstream, there would be about five miles of lake.

And it goes another probably 80, 90 miles before you get to the end of the canyon.

And it is typical of southeastern Utah, the canyon country.

(Mike) When the reservoir was higher, it was and it did inundate further up into cataract.

But currently there isn't any reservoir up there.

So this is just sediment that has fallen out of the Colorado River as the Colorado River current dies.

(David) Colorado in Spanish means red it was muddy.

And I guess that water with a lot of silt sediments in it, when it reaches a calm area, the sediments tend to drop out instead of flowing down.

(Mike) And that's one of the challenges the reservoirs is that every reservoir is lifetime is finite really because of the sediment load that's coming in from whatever's supplying and filling it.

This is the world's most beautiful settling pond.

They say it carries like seven Mississippi barge loads of sediment by any given location every day.

This is approximately 50 years of that sediment settling out into the upper reaches of Powell into Cataract Canyon.

The Returning Rapids Project for us is looking at the effects of Lake Powell in Cataract Canyon.

Cataract Canyon was 41 miles long.

It had 50 to 60 rapids in it.

When Lake Powell inundated those areas, all but 23, 24 of those rapids went underwater.

And years ago, we started noticing those rapids are coming back as Lake Powells levels started to drop.

Over the years, we have watched eight, ten rapids come back out and get carved back out.

But in that, too, as we watched the mud get flushed out, we watch and think, well, where is it all going?

Some people think when you are seeing the satellite images of the changes in Lake Powell, that it's just water going away.

But it really isn't.

It is this mud glacier that is filling the void of where the water was.

And it's moving and being further mobilized further into the basin of Lake Powell.

And the sediment is moving much, much faster than I think anybody thought.

(Jack) We are living in an unprecedented time where climate change is having dramatic effects on the flows of this system.

We have these bathtub ring features showcasing beautiful wingate sandstone walls.

We have vegetation that's returned to where there once was reservoir.

It's a pretty amazing thing, though, to witness.

This is Gregory Natural Bridge, pre inundation.

It was one of the biggest features.

Up in the left, you can see the bathtub ring way up high.

Used to be able to boat right over this thing.

None of this was exposed at high water.

(David) It's hard to imagine that this magnificent arch and we're just seeing the very top of it.

We can see thanks to the drought.

Drought sometimes has a positive side, and one of those is the lower water level makes this gives us the ability to see what we lost when the canyon was made one of the most glorious canyons in the world.

I think that one of the greatest blessings in the universe is the landscape's covered with Navajo sandstone.

(Jack) Gregory Bridge here is now the entrance to 50 Mile Canyon, which is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful canyons we have access to right now.

The landscape and the river itself through Glen Canyon was very subtle.

It wasn't as aggressive or extreme as you see in some of these other places, like Grand Canyon, like Cataract Canyon.

(David) Well, John Wesley Powell himself described it as a place of ongoing wonders after the horrors of Cataract Canyon were capsize after capsize.

All of a sudden, you get in these more calm waters with these very gently sculpted rocks.

(Jack) These side canyons here in the Escalante are particularly important because they're kind of right now for us modern explorers, we are able to see kind of like a microcosm of what Glen Canyon was.

So each one of these canyons were going to today has features that are have come back from high water and in many cases have come back from sediment load.

And they kind of showcase what can happen on a bigger scale in this canyon, should we give it the chance.

The Colorado River is charged primarily by snowpack in several mountain ranges in the intermountain west.

The snowpack builds up over the course of the winter and then historically, over several months, it melts and runs off down to the mountains into smaller creeks and streams that become bigger rivers that eventually create the Colorado River.

Climate change and overuse on the river has essentially created a situation where there's not enough water anymore from that runoff to create historical flows, and especially not enough to fill two giant reservoirs, Lake Powell and Mead.

One of the big projects that we're doing right now is a plant transect survey that we're in the process of getting off the ground.

And what that means is we come out to sections of canyon and we lay a tape across the canyon and every couple of meters we take a meter by meter square and count plants that we're finding.

We're already seeing native plants, and there's definitely non-natives, especially here in the kind of close inundation zone.

But the further we get away from the reservoir, the better the native plants are doing, In some cases, 40 foot tall cottonwood trees that have come back from high water.

(David) One of the irreplaceable things that were lost for 50, 60 years when the canyon was flooded was these very deep and narrow canyons with their sculpture that looks almost as if some divine hand, some extra terrestrial force shaped them and smoothed them for our enjoyment.

There is nowhere that I know of It can match that feeling of both smallness and intimacy with rock that makes the greatness seem small and the smallness seem great.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when final plans were being made for construction of Glen Canyon Dam, very few people had had an opportunity to see the wonders that that canyon contains.

If the proposal were to be made today, hundreds of people would have filmed it, would have uploaded their videos to social media, and the world would know that this place is worth protecting forever.

And no dam would ever have been built.

(Jack) Forgotten Canyon is another amazing canyon right off the main stem.

Now we get to walk up to the Defiance House dwelling, which at one point was a boating recreation site.

But now we get to have this beautiful experience of walking through the creek, through plant life, and then coming to the the archeological site.

(David) The archeological site here is just one of dozens, probably hundreds, that existed in the canyon before the dam was built, but were never really studied.

The Native Americans who live in this area all acknowledge that they have important ancestral remnants here, that the explorers of the Glen Canyon study never checked out.

This archeological site, which is approved for us to visit by the National Park Service is located in Forgotten Canyon, the one that was never studied by archeologists, and that's why it's called Forgotten.

It dates from oh perhaps 800 to 1000 years ago.

And the people who lived here found it very useful to be close to water.

When the lake was full, people could walk a hundred yards and be up here.

There was a walk of over a mile for us to get here, to see this strong heritage of people who found this site worth investing a lot of energy and thought into.

The ancient ones knew very well how to pick their sites because it took a lot of labor to make a habitable site here.

But this overhang is huge, which is typical Navajo sandstone gave them a lot of protection from the sun in hot months.

But cooler months.

The position above the creek meant warm air would come up here, so it was warmer and they got shelter from both rain and cold.

It's nice to see these original vegas, these wooden cross pieces that hold up the roof.

And on this one, archeologists have cut away a section to be able to do tree ring analysis to find out the year that wood was cut.

And that way they can tell roughly at what time the building was made.

And we know that most of them in here were between 900, 1200 A.D., some of them later.

But it was a a time when there was a great deal of movement in the Colorado Plateau from one place to another, large places being abandoned, others being settled.

A great deal interaction among various peoples in a time of of significant conflict between some.

And that story is still being unrolled both by archeologists and discussions with Native Americans about their oral traditions as to what was going on at that time.

What we have here is more or less underground structure that leads down into a fairly large room.

This is a ladder.

This site is really a nice flat place, but it took huge amounts of effort to bring up all the rock, the right shaped rock, and to import food and water from below and maintain families here.

The people who lived here, they did like to draw, as people like to do, and make expressions of what they were feeling.

Maybe tales that older people and told them, maybe stories that they themselves made up.

But you don't have to go too far to try to interpret what this means.

(Mike) Yeah, so this is the area right here where people would boat all the way in here and have places to tie their boats off to and deeper water so you wouldn't hurt your motor or what have you.

And I think, you know, this just shows how the Park Service here, this additional wall area has been slowly realizing that the reservoir is going away and building more and more infrastructure down that way.

(David) Nowadays, nearly the archeological study is required to build a dam would have made it impossible for that dam to have been constructed.

Jack, you call this a ghost forest, which is an intriguing name.

Tell us why you call it that.

(Jack) Well, these trees were alive in 1963 and then the reservoir came up and drowned them.

So they died.

But now, as the reservoir has lowered, we're able to see the trees again.

And so, yeah, we cruise into these canyons where water has come down and you start to realize you're getting close to the end of the canyon where you can start hiking and seeing restoration, because you start to see these fingers coming up out of the water, which are the tops of the ghost tree.

(David) Does that give you some sort of hope about what will return here?

(Jack) You know, this I call all these areas that we've been kind of walking in and exploring today, the moon zone, Because it sort of feels otherworldly and it's a place that people haven't been in a long time.

It's strange, right?

Looks strange.

So I don't know if hope's the right word, but I think as I spend more time in these areas and I do see stuff coming back and I, I see animals, birds and plants, I do get hope.

And I do think that seeing these old forests and knowing what it can look like again and looking at the photographs that we have from from the historical people, that spent time down here.

I am hopeful, really interested to see how the landscape will continue to change if we give it the chance.

(David) These are remnants of plants that were flooded and because the oxygen is lacking in the water, trees, vegetation, bushes that were there 60 years ago, well preserved.

As the waters go down, we will find the native trees returning and perhaps crowding out and pushing out that old dead ghost forest.

(Mike) They are making a choice, which I think is a wise choice to relocate this whole marina infrastructure all the way over to a place called Stanton Creek on the main stem of the Colorado, to be able to support reservoir recreation.

This place is going to go away.

It needs to.

Whether you are in favor of the reservoir or want to have continued reservoir based recreation, there needs to be a change made here.

(David) Some of the maps said that there was a ferry crossing.

(Mike) The ferry no longer runs.

(David) And it's high and dry.

And what do you do with a ferry that is out of commission when the closest next ferry is 500, a thousand miles away?

And the hope for the water to be deep enough or the demand to be great enough for it to be profitable.

(Mike) Yeah, well, they could pull it up and make it be housing or some type of structure that could be useful as they're relocating the marina.

But that ferry has been closed for two or three years, and even before then it was inconsistent.

It only operated like Thursday through Sunday when they found that there was traffic suitable, to be able to make it possible to run.

I've been an avid river runner for my whole life and along with that comes a deep appreciation of the Colorado River.

In the mid fifties, we thought it was okay to construct a dam.

That dam had a resulting reservoir that inundated 190, 185 some miles of Colorado River corridor and the damage and impacts of that that happened while it was filling were unmeasured and uncalculated.

We have seen the river inundate about 25 to 30 rapids since the 1960s and 1970s.

And then as the reservoir receded, we saw the mud delta covering the entire river corridor, wall to wall with a glacier of mud.

That displaced river has swept away ancient cultural sites and just made a mess of a beautiful place.

It was one thing to cover this whole landscape with a reservoir and to fill it with water.

It's a whole other thing to watch it get covered with mud.

The permanence and ongoing impact of that sediment is much greater than the water impact.

The way that is displacing the river and causing it to flow over different areas and out of its historic path is causing a lot of damage.

What our research continues to show is that if given the chance, if we get the effects of human beings and of the dam and the reservoir out of the picture, the river will restore itself and keep doing what it's been doing for geologic ages upon ages.

(David) Before the dam flooded the canyons, dozens of side drainages.

They were host to a rich variety of plants and wildlife.

The point at which the Colorado River enters the lake has been migrating downstream rapidly.

Left behind are colossal mudflats where once grew, rich forests of riverine vegetation.

Just outside Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, we can see the vegetation that was there before Lake Powell inundated and destroyed all of the native vegetation.

It's a mixture of cottonwoods and willows and smaller scrubs intermingled with the junipers that are up higher.

Everything that the lake destroyed when it was filled.

But it's a natural system that has the waters of Lake Powell are now receding, we will have what it was like beforehand and we will see how much it has changed from the way the vegetation was 60, 70 years ago.

Looking down and seeing that abandoned marina, what looks as though you're seeing an historical structure down there.

30 years ago, that would have been a buzzing scene of activity of boats.

(Mike) Oh, yes, it was.

Sediment is just such a massive issue through here, and it really is.

I always like to refer to it as it's the tailings pile of mining the Colorado for its water.

Below us here is where the river does come back to its main channel.

But this is all this giant sediment Mudflat.

The mud is about 150, 160 feet deep through here.

(David) The bank I'm standing on is mud.

That when it dries out, it cracks and ultimately slumps off, splashes into the river.

And the boats then only have a very challenging way to get out.

And that is going to pose unending problems for the river runners.

(Mike) See all the cracks in this area?

(David) I'm not sure I want to be where you are.

(Mike) So it really is like a giant mud glacier that's slowly moving and just falling into the river.

We've talked about how this bend here is the river flowing out of its channel and it was flowing across all the sediment that was here.

But this last fall, these rock points started to show.

And so what that means is the river has carved down far enough that it's flowing on bedrock.

(David) So it's going to shoot back over to the other side.

(Mike) Well, but it can't go too far because there's more rock over there, which means there's going to be a rapid here that never has been formed on the Colorado River in our lifetimes before.

And it wasn't here before.

The reservoir is here because the river was supposed to be way over there.

(David) The emerging river bottom has a profound story to relate.

Whether the river can continue to return to its pre-dammed state and its vibrant health depends partly on human factors, that is how much water downstream diverters such as agribusiness and expanding urban and industrial demands in Arizona and California will siphon off the river.

An even greater factor is how much climate change and the great southwestern drought will continue to diminish the flows of what was once the wildest, biggest river in the southwestern United States.

Join us next time In the Americas with me David Yetman.

Christopher Columbus brought many things to the Americas, some good, some not so good.

The heritage of his voyages and his crews of Spaniards endures.

It included the export of the culture of southwestern Spain.

That culture pervaded Columbus's thinking and that of the many sailors who guided him, accompanied him, and made his trips possible.

(Jack) So this is cathedral here.

This is the spring of 2020.

And as you can see, we were parking our boat right here, 5 to 6 feet away from where the historical photographs were taken from.

So sediment banks that were, you know, 35 feet tall or something were getting washed away in the course of a year or two.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for Indian Americans with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.