Day 8: Grand Canyon still awash in politics

The Colorado River in Grand Canyon, photo by Sadie Babits

The Colorado River in Grand Canyon remains flooded with controversy, more than a decade after federal policies were established to regulate flows out of Glen Canyon Dam. I was tipped off to the latest round of legal battles by a blog post in Arizona Geology, “Science ignored in Grand Canyon flows.” In the short item, author and state geologist Lee Allison included a link to a Wednesday Washington Post story that unveiled ongoing wrangling between Grand Canyon National Park, the Bureau of Interior, the Bureau of Reclamation and a Flagstaff-based environmental group, the Grand Canyon Trust, that’s accusing the two federal agencies (BOI and BOR) of illegally operating the dam in favor of industry. On the losing end, says the Grand Canyon Trust, are the Grand Canyon’s natural resources, including the famously homely fish called the humpback chub, that the National Park System is duty-bound to protect.

Quite a mouthful, eh?

I’ll back up. The Department of the Interior oversees the National Park Service. The Bureau of Reclamation regulates flow out of the nation’s hydroelectric dams. The main issue in the Grand Canyon: various flow volumes and their timing can either mimic natural flows to enhance wildlife habitat and bolster the beaches, or compromise habitat and erode the shore. Usually, the best flows for resource enhancement are opposite what’s best for optimum generation of hydroelectric power.

In 1992, the feds issued the Grand Canyon Protection Act, ordering the Bureau of Reclamation to manage the dam to allow for flows that benefit native fish and the other natural attributes that the National Park Service is designed to protect. A few years later, new programs were set up so that scientists could monitor the downstream effects of the dam, and so that people with interests in the river — including federal management agencies, states, tribes, environmental groups, and the power industry — could sit at a table, together, and respond to the science, cooperatively adjusting dam management as new information was revealed. The Washington Post article reports that the federal government has spent $100 million since 1996 to study the effects of Glen Canyon Dam.

Called the Adaptive Management Work Group, that 27-member body has struggled mightily ever since, with frequent, messy clashes of interests and agendas. No matter what flow regime is proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation, a subset of the stakeholders complains. When I wrote about the issue for the Arizona Daily Sun and High Country News in 2002, some of the environmental groups were so frustrated — because they felt endangered species like the humpback chub were losing out to power industry interests — that they grumbled about lawsuits. But they held out, trying to have faith in the adaptive management process, which was rooted in admirable ideals (cooperation), but seemed increasingly unwieldy.

In 2006, five environmental groups not with the Adaptive Management Work Group filed suit against the Bureau of Reclamation, the Secretary of the Interior (then Gale Norton), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  The suit was settled later the same year, when the government agreed to more studies and, if necessary, revisions to the management of the dam.

But in 2007, the Grand Canyon Trust — which has been at the table in the Adaptive Management Work Group since its inception — finally had enough. That group sued, and the infighting described in the Washington Post story pertains to that ongoing battle. In a fact list circulated to reporters, Nikolai Lash, the Trust’s Water Program director, summed up the complaint this way: “Due to pressure from water and power interests, the [Secretary of the Interior] has resisted operating dams in a manner that ameliorates downstream resource impacts.”

So, it’s the same conflict that has plagued two decades of Colorado River management, and which underlies too many environmental issues: it’s a matter of priorities. In the Grand Canyon, we may not know for years whether industry or nature will prevail.

What’s most distressing to me is that the long-running attempt to forge a compromise — through the adaptive management process — seems to have proven expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful. What a shame.