Is the best response to a concerning noise coming from your car’s engine to turn the car stereo up? A decidedly ill-advised approach to obvious warning signs is to cross your fingers and hope for the best but continue with business as usual. Like, for example, responding to consistently retreating shoreline by extending your docks and praying for rain.
“Life After Dead Pool” by Zak Podmore details the very real and immediate threats to Lake Powell specifically and the future of Colorado River water rights more broadly.
The term "dead pool" refers to the state of a reservoir once the water depth falls below the level of the lowest water outlets, in the case of Lake Powell, 3,370 feet. At that depth, not only is Glen Canyon Dam not generating hydroelectric energy, water becomes trapped triggering numerous ecological problems.
Any Utahn who recreates on Lake Powell has noticed the rapidly retreating shoreline and corresponding desperate dock extensions. After several consecutive years of drought and steadily increasing usage upriver, the water volume shrinkage is dramatic. Although anyone can easily see the change in the water levels, Podmore provides an exhaustive study of why and how these dropping water levels are affecting the canyon.
There is plenty of hopeful news in Podmore’s findings. Among the most exciting is the return of native species to those areas that had been underwater for decades. In some cases, the native species are returning within just a few years giving conservationists reason to hope that a return of the Colorado River and the canyon to something like its pre-dam state is possible.
However, if the best we can do when faced with the fact of an impending Lake Powell dead pool is what Governor Cox suggested and pray for precipitation, then when you don’t like the sound your car’s engine is making maybe cranking up your radio is the solution for you.
Podmore will discuss his book at the Park City Library at 6 p.m. on March 24. The talk is free and open to the public. “Life After Dead Pool” is available now at your local public libraries.
