When the Glen Canyon Institute was founded in 1995 to restore Glen Canyon, one of the first statements I heard was one that has been repeated hundreds of times. It is, "We would not be allowed to build Glen Canyon dam today." Oddly, this statement comes from people in the environmental world, politicians, as well as from officials within the Bureau of Reclamation. This, of course, is troubling to anyone who hears it, for if it would be wrong or illegal to build Glen Canyon dam now, why was it allowed in the 1950s?

To understand how such an environmentally damaging and water wasting structure could be built in the 1950s it helps to understand a bit about those times. A new world had emerged. Times were rapidly changing. The wars were over, new and fast jets soared overhead, Russian satelites orbited the earth, Dr. Salk had stopped the evils of polio and a new rock star named Elvis was "all shook up." Crick discovered that genes were really DNA and Mantle kept swinging in home runs. McCarthy attacked liberals and Eisenhower seemed too good to be true.

A stamp was produced with a picture of a dam on it, with the word "Conservation" printed along side. In the 1950s environmentalists were called "nature lovers." Tourism was booming and families were traveling to see this land on brand new crisscrossing interstate highways that went everywhere. Places that had never been seen before were being discovered. In the 1950s over 9000 people traveled the waters of the Colorado River through Glen Canyon to see magnificent Rainbow Bridge.

There was contentment to be sure in stark contrast to the decade that was to come. But in the 1950s, we finally were at peace. We had money, we had people, we had new power, and we were anxious to build. So we did. We built homes, tall buildings, big bombs, long bridges and huge dams. No project seemed too big or insurmountable to accomplish. Maps made of the United States drew the Colorado River as a thin blue line beginning in Colorado and ending up in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s because, back then, it did flow to the ocean. But that was about to change.

Out in the Southwest people were showing up in the wide open, waterless lands in droves. And happy developers were counting their cash all the way to the bank. Las Vegas was using more kilowatt hours than anyone could ever have imagined and Hoover dam was performing admirably. With this new growth, the developers turned to sources of water. The only river of any consequence in the region was the Colorado, but could it deliver? No one knew, for the water question had never been resolved.

To understand the problem of how humans get water from rivers, we must understand how water flows. Water does one thing, it flows downstream. So people who use river water have tended to be divided into "upper" and "lower" water users. As water flows downstream, lower water users get "free" water. This does not make the people upstream happy at all as they watch water flow down away from them.

Moreover, people who use water from any river know that most of the water in a river flows in the Spring during runoff. There is little water during the Winter months. This is an age old problem for which mankind has not found the best solution. However, one solution to managing the problems of uneven flow and ownership rights to river water comes in the form of dams. With dams comes the ability to appropriate water and with impoundment the seeming ability to regulate flow. Simple enough in theory, but far more complex in implementation and with untoward consequences.

These problems plagued the beautiful Colorado river and were debated way back in the early 1900s. No one could even begin to imagine how to divide the water of the Colorado and keep the water regulated and from being "wasted" into the ocean. So to allocate the river water "equitably," Herbert Hoover ordered the seven states who contribute water to the Colorado River to meet and come up with some plan. This was no easy task.

Downstream Los Angeles had emerged as a huge hungry water gorilla, gobbling every drop of water within hundreds of miles. Mulholland was the head "gobbler" and he would stop at nothing to feed his thirst. Mono Lake and the Owens Valley were first to be sucked dry and now he was drinking from the Colorado. This scared everyone and was on people’s minds when they met to discuss how to divide the river water.

After years of debate, the seven states finally agreed to the Colorado River Compact in 1922. The idea seemed simple and straight forward. They would divide the states into upper and lower water users and call them "basins" with a point near Lee’s Ferry Arizona selected as the arbitrary dividing point. Both the upper and the lower basin would receive 7.5 million acre feet of water annually. Then each basin could divide up water amongst their own states however they wanted. The compact was signed in 1922 in New Mexico with a smiling Herbert Hoover presiding.

The lower basin states were quick to allocate their acre feet of water to each state. But the upper basin was not so fast. In fact, it was not until nearly 34 years later that they got around to passing a law that dealt with their share of water. This was done in the infamous Colorado River Storage Project Act of 1956. It is known by most as CRSP. In part this law came in response to cries from within the Bureau and from Washington, DC for the upper basin to get their act together and obey the compact. But it was also driven by the need to feed water to the rapid expansion in the Southwest in the 1950's. As part of this law, a number of dams were proposed to be built. There were about 14 or so of them, including ones in Echo Park, Split Mountain and Glen Canyon. Glen Canyon dam was "needed" so that exactly 7.5 million acre feet of water (one half of the average yearly flow) would flow downstream to "lower" water users annually.

No one knew how damaging big dams were back then, but everyone knew that they covered and destroyed a lot of beauty. At this time there were no groups or organizations around to fight all of these new dams that had been proposed. The environmental movement had never defined itself because it had never needed to define itself. But it was about to do just that. In San Francisco was the relatively small Sierra Club with its new charismatic and very articulate executive director David Brower. On the other side, in Washington, was Wayne Aspinall, the powerful "work projects" oriented congressman from Colorado and the blunt "stop at nothing" assistant Bureau chief Floyd Dominy. These were the people that would help to forever define and shape the modern environmental movement.

In the end it was the Sierra Club who emerged to lead the fight for the nature lovers. At issue were two of the dams in CRSP that troubled people the most---Echo Park and Split Mountain dams, to be built in Dinosaur National Monument. The Sierra Club’s policy was that "no major scenic resource should be sacrificed for power generation." The Sierra Club fought hard to prevent these dams from being built. After all, thousands of people visited these parks each year. Comparatively few had seen Glen Canyon. Originally the battle was to defeat CRSP entirely. The battle started around 1949 when CRSP was proposed and went on for nearly seven years. The Sierra Club, which really had been mostly an outdoor enjoyment club, was taken to a new arena of activism by David Brower. And as it took on these new battles, its membership soared.

The battle over CRSP became deadlocked in the mid-1950's. On one side was Dominy and Aspinall, and on the other David Brower. With each year’s delay came hope that CRSP would go down to defeat. But then within the environmental movement itself fractures began to occur. Some of the leaders within the Sierra Club began to be fearful of looking "too extreme" and wondered if opposing these dams was the wise thing to do. Harold Bradley was the president of the Sierra Club’s board of directors. He floated down Glen Canyon. He wrote a stunning letter dated September 6, 1955 to the head of the National Park Service.

Bradley wrote, "I made a boat trip down through Glen Canyon. I was much impressed of course with this magnificent canyon. Glen Canyon could well be a National Park too for its magnificence. Inundation of the side canyons will be a great loss of course. But personally, I feel content to see Glen Canyon go under water."

To keep the image of the Sierra Club more conservative Bradley helped persuade the board of directors to pull the Sierra Club’s opposition to building Glen Canyon Dam while still opposing the dams in Dinosaur National Monument. With this decision a compromise was reached between the two factions. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, agreed to withdraw their opposition to Glen Canyon dam and to the Colorado River Storage Project as a whole if the Echo and Split Mountain dams were dropped from the CRSP agenda. Congress passed the bill in April of 1956. They authorized the CRSP without the Echo Park and Split Mountain dams, but including the Glen Canyon dam.

And so despite doubts from geologists about its design, and assurance from engineers that the water storage would be wasteful and the knowlege that kilowatts could come cheaper from a longer lasting resource than from a short lived dam on the silt laden, over engineered and uniquely beautiful Colorado river, Glen Canyon dam was built. With its rising waters, hundreds of thousands of acres of the most beautiful scenery in the world was covered, including over 3,000 Indian ruins, nearly 200 miles of the river and hundreds of wondrous side canyons. And suddenly two species of animal life were driven to extinction and others were forced to cling perilously to life.

But it did not stop there. Having just defeated those cry baby "nature lovers," the Bureau of Reclamation, with Floyd Dominy its new director, took aim at another natural wonder. On the very day in March 1963 that the bypass tunnels were closed at Glen Canyon Dam, the Bureau of Reclamation announced plans for the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon. But this time a line was drawn in the sand.

David Brower along with Martin Litton and a very large army of soldiers that now called themselves "environmentalists," defended the Canyon with all their might. "Remember Glen Canyon" was their motto. It looked like the battle would be over before it was ever fought, because Marble Dam construction was well underway when debate began. Finally, Secretary of the Interior Udall stopped the entire project. The battle for the Grand Canyon dams had ended and the environmentalists had won.

The environmental movement was now organized. The Sierra Club had over 70,000 members, up from the rag tag band of 7,000 members 20 years earlier. Congress was ripe for environmental legislation. Two bills were introduced and passed by a Republican congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Never again could a Glen Canyon Dam be built. Never again could the Grand Canyon be destroyed by these archaic and damaging monoliths. The environmental movement was defined by the battles for the dams on the Colorado River.

Now take a minute and reflect. Look back on American history and think about what environmental losses have occurred in U.S. history. One could make a long list. Certainly the loss of the nations forests would come to mind as a terrible tragedy. The loss of clean water and the pollution of our air is appalling. But if someone could name a single environmental incident that caused the most damage, and that continues to evoke the most emotion, it would have to be the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1956.

Today we are wiser, to be sure. We know much more than we knew in the 1950's. Big dams, for all their water storage capability, are bad and whatever benefits they give to the world are immensely overshadowed by the destruction that they cause. Today Glen Canyon dam and the laws of the river are inadequate to serve the needs of an expanding American West. Water is being wasted in such intolerable amounts that the river never reaches the ocean. Wildlife, plant life and whole communities are dying as a result. Species are endangered from the headwaters all the way to the Delta because of that dam. It is silting in at an alarming rate and after only 40 years of life, the San Juan arm of Lake Powell is completely sedimented in. Hite marina has only a few years of life remaining.

A tremendous lack of foresight was used in building Glen Canyon Dam. So now, in a time of new awareness of water rights and claims, increasing water demands, as well as environmental concerns, new rules must be developed to manage Western water. The movement to restore Glen Canyon started by the Glen Canyon Institute, and supported by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, is working hard to decommission Glen Canyon dam and restore wondrous Glen Canyon and the life of the beautiful Colorado River.

For more information on how you can help contact: www.glencanyon.org

Dr. Richard Ingebretsen is president of the Glen Canyon Institute.