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FLAGSTAFF & GCPR
We have a super opportunity here to remember the Glen Canyon
that was, that is, and that can be. And to put all three into
their global effectas seen by an 87-year-old who has known
what was and is, and has developed good biases about what can
be. These biases could please everyone here, and even a lot
of people who aren't here but who care about what we are doing
to the Earth and can do for it and for the creatures
who think it's a pretty good place.
Feel free to agree that I have a confusing past. I wanted
a higher Glen Canyon dam to help save Echo Park. Learning that
I had the right figures but the wrong idea, I worked hard, with
a lot of help, to delay the Colorado River Storage Project until
it made ecological sense, which hasn't happened yet.
I favor what William H. Whyte said in this book, The Organization
Man, in which he advocates Retroactive Planning, where you
act on what you viscerally know is right, then do the research
to prove it.
Jane Jacobs, who is close to my age and can thus being considered
an elder, says that when ordinary people pay attention, they
are often capable of more profound insights than the experts.
The opportunity here is to see how we can get ordinary people,
us, to have time to pay attention to the immediate chance to
restore the Earth that we face here, and what the global implications
will be if our insight beats the experts, if that is what it
takes. Let me make it clear that I have nothing against experts.
I wouldn't be alive without them. Now and then their insight
is impaired. That's why God created ordinary people.
Some very good clear-thinking people have concluded that Glen
Canyon dam was built in a wrong and dangerous place, that the
Law of Diminishing Returns was right, that it wastes water we
cannot afford to lose, pollutes the river in ways we failed to
consider, is extremely vulnerable to engineering and economic
disaster, is not needed, and indeed defeats the purpose for which
it was intended; moreover it has lost the world one of its most
beautiful places, and can be restored at a fraction of the cost
of not restoring it.
And when restored, it can revive what can be one of the world's
most magnificent national park ideas and initiate the comprehensive
restoration of the Colorado River watershed. Both of these goals
will be of great economic value locally and globally and both
are achievable.
I owe it to you to add another fact, which no one is old enough
to deny and which is true even if they want to deny it. For
a series of reasons I could go into if anyone cares, I can say
that Glen Canyon dam would not have been built if I can kept
the Sierra Club Board of Directors fully informed of what I had
learned from experts and other insightful people of what was
wrong with the engineering, hydrology, ecology, energy planning,
and economic vulnerability the Bureau of Reclamation had not
addressed.
We had the votes in the House of Representatives to stop it.
My failure to keep the Sierra Club properly informed let them
to stop the club's opposition to the Colorado Project. Without
that opposition, the project sailed through in 1956.
Forty years later the Sierra Club saw the light, and hopes
that you, too, will realize the importance of restoring Glen
Canyon and exploiting the opportunity and letting the world know
what it no longer needs to miss the wonder of the Earth that
too few people knew.
Warning. Perhaps I should title this talk "Can Glen
Canyon Be Restored Soon Enough?"
There was pain when Glen Canyon was inundated. There will
be pain when it is restored. But neither pain will come close
to what loss of the dam could cost in pain, loss of life,and
economic chaos.
Remember, we came too close to losing the dam in June 1983,
a big water year but by no means the biggest. Major damage
was incurred when the dam exceeded its capacity. It will exceed
its capacity more often, and waste more water, as the reservoir
fills with sediment. The Navajo sandstone leaks badly now and
is unlikely to get better. The Bureau of Reclamation was initially
concerned about the damsite but built Glen Canyon dam there anyway.
A big dam in California failed the day after its builder has
said it was safe. My information is that if Glen fails when
full, Hoover will fail too. If so, four years full flow of the
Colorado River will head for the Sea of Cortez and way points
in a few hours. The only good news is that Tuscon would no longer
have to worry about the poor quality of its Colorado River water.
And this could happen by accident, as it almost did in 1983,
or as every thinking person must be aware, by intent. As was
pointed out several years ago, a nuclear bomb designed by a high
school chemistry student could empty Lake Mead.
The sooner Glen Canyon dam is retired and Floyd Dominy,
its builder, has explained how to reopen the diversion tunnels
that made the dam possible the sooner we can stop worrying
about the disaster that could happen, that must not happen,
and the sooner we can get to work on the exciting alternatives.
I recommend that we count on our insight, not our luck.
Thank you for listening. If you have questions, I'll try
by best to answer them or lean on someone who can and isn't 87
yet.
David R. Brower
Berkeley, California 3-12-2000
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