I used to fish in the late 1950's at Lee's Ferry before the Glen Canyon Dam was built and the water was always beige with sediment. There were coves where the sediment would settle and the water would be clear and refreshing. Loved it!
@@waterbug85 I now live in SE Arizona but am always trying to get to Lee's Ferry to fish. Best month for fishing is January (I think) as there are very few others there fishing and the campground is empty.
@@peteh5862 I'd like to say I'll meet you there in 6 months for breakfast, fishing and new friends. But it's getting hard for me to get anywhere these days. I live over here in Riverside, Ca. My days are pretty simple now and really would like to meet up for fishing in the Lee's Ferry area if I just could.
@@dianahoward2717 Young whipper snappers need to have half the ballpark Ed and Ken had and question authority, the same authority that told us Glen Canyon was a good place to dam, and came this close to damming the grand canyon in the 60's, and thanks to the dirty long hairs was narrowly averted. Look it up you don't believe me.
This is basically a public service propaganda film, trying to convince people that the creation of the artificial Lake Powell hasn’t done any ecological damage. Notice no mention of the silt that’s prevented from moving downriver by the dam, nor any explanation of how they prevent the dam from becoming clogged... oh, wait, maybe that’s why they have to open all four vents together.
Originally they calculated the dam's life at ~100 years before sediment backed up behind it to make it useless. Hopefully they are drawing the water for these massive releases from the bottom of the dam thereby drawing out lots of sediment.
I don't understand the disappearing limited resource aspect of water, virtually every molecule of water that has ever been on earth or their constituent atoms of Hydrogen and Oxygen are still here from billions of years ago. That is like saying that Iron or Silicon are disappearing.
@Michael Clark It's not water in general that's disappearing but usable water. Sure there is a lot of water in the oceans but making that usable is very expensive. And other elements can "disappear" in a similar way. There are actually thousands of tons of gold in the oceans but extracting it would be far more expensive than its actual value.
They don't take the fish out of the way, so yes, fish are in this high flow water. If your wondering do fish go through the dam during high flow water. I believe the answer is yes, but only baby fry fish have a chance at surviving high flow through the dam. The bigger fish below the dam are stocked by DF&G. imho
Good question. Wondering whether design included preservation of fish stocks, as is done in salmon rivers in Scotland. They have “bypass” channels for big salmon returning to spawn upstream.
Lovely video and voice! Also you sounded very happy whenever you said 'this is after' and hearing the joy you had for aiding in the health of the ecosystem made me smile.
What the hell kind of question is that ? Are you kidding ? Have you seen the Grand Canyon ? Do you know how many years that river has run to carve a canyon of that magnitude ? Me neither.
It’s not all about California in Nebraska we use the water from reservoirs to water crops. If we did dam it up it would all flow to the Ocean. It’s a thing of Beauty to see how the hard working people of the 40-50 design this without computers and all of the high-tech equipment we have now days.
This country lost the greatest treasure so many generations never got to know by flooding Glen canyon to create Powell. Thousands of side canyons, natural grottos, hundreds of petroglyphs, and so much more. Really such an increadibly rare and unique natural and national treasure lost forever so a bunch of floating RV's can temporarily house drunken kids making great decisions on the "lake". Oh and a few rich swine can become that much filthier stinking rich for killing an entire ecosystem. Tear down the damn and free the river and all those beautiful geological and historic treasures, after letting 70 years of sediment run down river and cleaning up all the beer bottles, styrofoam coolers, and plastic line and lures of course.
I feel your pain from 5000 miles away. How TF are they going to extract all those floating palaces from an ever shrinking reservoir with no access to it?
0:26 Why is there a pipe in the middle of the water flow? Doesn't make much sense. The same with others at 0:40. Why put it right in the middle of the stream?
Navaho Nation marina at antelope canyon marina is a major employing job, the national park service has been trying to destroy the Marina, never gave any money for the land flooded, never any electricity from the dam,
That's where it ends up, this is Glenn Canyon, Utah and that released water flows through the Grand Canyon until it hits Lake Mead hundreds of miles downstream. The problem with Lake Mead isn't just that there is less water coming in, thirsty California is taking it out faster than it comes in. Even if they completely emptied Lake Powell into Lake Mead, what would you do next year?
They do. But sometimes you just can't use all of it, as the turbines aren't designed for high-volume flow. The dam system in the American west generates plenty of electricity. That's partly why it was created.
Reclamation - the process of claiming something back. So you’re going to restore Glen Canyon? To the Department of Reclamation, “I do not think that word means what you think it means...”
I can't speak to ecological damage - I acknowledge it happens - but most of the large cities of the SW US would not exist if not for dams like this one. The area would be mostly uninhabitable.
Not fake, but possibly levels over-corrected in PhotoShop. That sand is bright and the greenery around it is darker. Plus, the lighting in those canyons can be tricky.
Lake Mead has a capacity of 31 million acre-feet. Lake Powell has a capacity of 27 million acre-feet. That would be 58 million acre-feet. That's a small ocean. There's just no room. Plus, Lake Powell allows the upper Colorado River Basin to store or bank water that it owes the lower basin according to the 1922 Compact, so that it is available just in case we run out of our own supply. It's planning for the future. If Mead and Powell and all the other reservoirs on the Colorado River and its tributaries were not full in 2000 we would have felt this drought 10 years ago or more. My concern is the lack of ways to store and reservoir water in California and other Western states. How much of that recent rain and snowfall ended up in the ocean and is now unusable. The end.
It's not "wasting water." They move a certain amount downstream in a year. By doing this they just bunch some of it up into short periods of higher flow, in return for lower later on. The biggest reason to have the dam is to provide irrigation water for the food we all eat. The dam will not be removed. The lake will not be drained. The water level in the reservoirs continues to drop even in record snow years. Not because of "global warming", but because of the hordes of Democrats who choose to live in southern California. Nature is not capable of providing that much water even when we cheat through dam building.
water goes to the highest bidder. since california is entirely run by the corrupt democrat party they tax the hell out of its citizens and buy water 'rights' instead of creating their own water storage system. but ... people still keep voting for democrats. go figure
@grumpy old fart wyoming is beautiful indeed. just not too fond of the winters. az wont be much of a change for me. daughter lived in fountain ... have thought seriously about joining her when she goes back
If they drain this lake I'm sure down stream will mess it up somehow. Just like they destroying the beauty of the land an building buildings an roads. They need water to have water displays n Vegas, golf courses, pools 8n middle of deserts, I can keep going on n on with all ways u guys just screw it up
We dont use the dam water. Our water is from a well an m just saying, no matter how much water is given, somehow some way, they will misuse it, or waste it. Shame....
High flow released water only two years ago, now lake Powell is at 34 capacity, environmental activists who want a free river, depriving 30,000,000 people of electricity and water
That's nice, mother earth is doing this all over the planet and DR thinks they have discovered something new and now it has to be "studied". Our TAX dollars at work, what a joke Leroy.
Trees on sandbars, preventing the creation of an artificial lake? Isn't that what is supposed to happen? Or did they build Lake Mead just so you could water ski on it.
I live in Arizona, we are constantly faced with drought conditions, throwing the water away in this fashion is irresponsible. For sandbars? For beaches? What about the People???? We need water.
No water is wasted on high-flows. Reclamation is required to move certain amount of water from the Upper Colorado River Basin to the Lower, every year. By varying when and how much we send in our monthly "payments" we can store up and release a larger amount of water than normal, which imitates the natural surges of an undammed river. The same amount of water is released every year, it's just split up into volumes that are not the same every month.
