AdvocateCOLORADO PLATEAUCOLORADO PLATEAU

SUMMER 2002

A PUBLICATION OF THE GRAND CANYON TRUST

W H A T ’ S I N S I D E

Letter from the President 2

Energy Issue Introduction 3

Global Warming on Colorado

Plateau 4

Plateau Soft Energy Paths 8

Protecting Grand Canyon’s

Gateway 11

Restoring Colorado River 15

Questioning a Pipeline 16

Singing Stone 18

Energy IssueEnergy Issue

Air and Energy, Grand Canyon and ColoradoPlateau: Grand Canyon and the Plateau need an advo-cate to clean dirty air, which mars the region's vistas. Withthe Navajo Generating Station at Page running with cleanair technology and the settlement of the Mohave PowerPlant, we are now deeply engaged in cleaning up the SanJuan and Springerville Power Plants on the eastern edge ofthe Plateau. In addition to significantly reducing specificsources of air pollution, we are also addressing energydemand. We helped support the Arizona EnvironmentalPortfolio Standard, and we are figuring out incentives touse renewable sources of energy and reduce consumption.Closer to home, we are building a solar array to generateour own electricity for our office.

Escalante, Arches, and Canyonlands near Moab,Utah: The Trust is in the midst of retiring grazing fromkey lands in the Grand Staircase-Escalante NationalMonument; leading the Castle Valley Collaboration tosave this special place near Moab; and working to con-vince the federal government to move the toxic Atlasmine tailings pile off the banks of the Colorado River.

Virgin River, Southern Utah: Read on about thethreat of a water pipeline from Lake Powell to St. George,Utah—a pipeline that could cause explosive populationgrowth and end remoteness of this region forever. TheTrust may be the only group asking important questionsof Utah residents and others about the potential impactsof a water supply pipeline on growth, their pocketbooks,and the impacts on remote lands along its possible route.Meanwhile, our Virgin River program continues to makesignificant headway to restore several miles of the river onthe way to Zion National Park.

This April, I hiked to Havasu Falls for the first time.The falls have managed to withstand the consumptivedemands of our society and increasing numbers ofpeople. Standing there, I thought about the condor ourmember had seen and was reminded that nature helpsus to remember that all life is a gift. Perhaps the ulti-mate test for the Grand Canyon Trust is in leaving theGrand Canyon and Colorado Plateau a better place thanwe found it—a landscape with thriving, compact com-munities nestled in wild lands with clean air, a healthyColorado River, and a sense of hope that the future willbe bright here. Thank you, as always, for your dedica-tion to staying the path with us, blazing a path for abetter future!

—Geoffrey S. Barnard

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A place so still the air quivers with bluevibrancy, air so clean you can see 60 miles to NavajoMountain. These are places our members have men-tioned in recent months. "I stood in the Grand Canyon,so still that I became part of the rock wall. A small blackdot moved towards me. I almost stopped breathing andwaited for that dot to overtake me. As it approached, Irealized I was seeing for the first time in my life a Cali-fornia condor, so majestic, it dwarfed all other birds. Inthat silence, that one moment, I realized my life is agift," one member told me a few weeks ago.

We have been buffeted by a couple of storms thesepast few months, but the Grand Canyon Trust remainssteadfast. Storms have included a controversy whicherupted over our grazing retirement program led byColor Country Alliance (formerly People for the USA);an acrimonious fight in Congress over drilling inrefuges like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR), which has implications for energy explorationin and near the national monuments scattered acrossthe Colorado Plateau.

The good news is that, once again, the ColoradoPlateau is weathering these challenges: the grazing retire-ment issue is being settled, and the Department of Interiorissued a statement that supports the existence of the newnational monuments in our region. But these threats makeit clear to us, now more than ever, that the Trust must staythe course, and continue to create the conditions forpeople to do right by the land, air, and water.

We strive to be a powerful advocate for conserva-tion, a tenacious guardian for the Grand Canyon andthe Colorado Plateau, and a positive voice for landprotection and restoration in canyon country. Whetherthe issue is clear air, efficient energy, healthy rivers, orprotected land, our goal is nothing less than a ColoradoPlateau that remains wild.

As you delve into the pages of this summer's Advocate,you will see just how we have focused our conservationefforts this year:

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What do protection and restoration of theColorado Plateau have to do with energy development,power plant cleanups, renewable energy and energyefficiency? In a word, everything! In this issue of theAdvocate, you will read about how all these issues cometogether in our work.

In our increasingly interconnected world, the waywe develop, transport, generate, and use energy hasbecome absolutely central to the conservation ofnature everywhere, perhaps nowhere more so than onthe Colorado Plateau. The natural systems and stun-ning beauty of the Colorado Plateau are at great riskfrom the impacts of oil, gas, and coal exploitation; theonce pristine air is now seriously degraded by emis-sions from the numerous coal and natural gas powerplants on and around the Plateau; and the vast aridlands of the region are among those most at risk inNorth America from projected impacts of global climatechange. Threatened by both the production and theconsumption sides of the equation, the ColoradoPlateau is like a poster child for the stark energychoices facing America.

While the Plateau has long been recognized bysociety for its unique places, it has also been exploitedlike a discount energy warehouse for the urbanizedWest. The evidence is indelibly etched across the land-scape—massive dams on the Colorado River, such asGlen Canyon and Flaming Gorge; thousands of aban-doned uranium mines and tailings sites, includingthe 13-million-ton Atlas pile in Moab; tens of thousandsof miles of roads punched into once wild country, in adogged search for oil, gas, coal, and uranium; thousandsof miles of electric transmission lines; and a score oflarge coal-fired power plants spewing millions of poundsof sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, mer-cury, and particulate pollution into the once purest airin the world.

Much of this energy infrastructure was put in place inthe 50s and 60s, perhaps before we clearly understood allthe environmental implications. But sometimes it seemslike the more things change, the more they stay the same.Under the guise of a national energy “crisis,” the ColoradoPlateau has once again become the bull's-eye on a target

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Air Quality, Energy, Climate and the Colorado PlateauAn Introduction to this Issue of the Advocate

to dramatically increase drilling, mining, transporting, andgenerating of energy in the name of “energy security.” Forthe first time in decades, new coal-fired power plants arebeing proposed in the region and attempts are underwayto expand old plants.

This new energy rush threatens all the values on thePlateau we work to protect. Further, and perhaps evenmore alarming, are the potentially devastating secondaryeffects that continued expansion of the use of fossil fuelsmay have on this land that we love. Atmospheric buildupof greenhouse gases, and the resulting changes in climatethat are already apparently underway pose tremendousthreats to the plants and animals of the Colorado Plateau,as you can read about in this Advocate.

Given these threats, the Trust is greatly increasing ourefforts to stop the expansion of outdated energy develop-ment and production schemes on the Plateau. Instead, theTrust is encouraging and promoting softer paths towardsenergy independence, namely development of renewablesources of energy and vastly improved efficiency in existinguses. In this issue you will read about our diverse work onpower plant cleanups, on renewable energy development,and on stopping bad energy development schemes.

It is ironic that the Colorado Plateau, with enoughannual sunshine to meet the entire electrical energydemand of the United States, is instead being degradedin the name of destructive energy schemes that will onlymeet a small fraction of the country’s need. It is thismyopic vision that our work is aiming to correct.

—Brad Ack

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and Paria Plateau above Marble Canyon.

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The evidence is overwhelming, our planet iswarming. Since 1900, the average temperature on Earthhas risen about 1.1º F. The twentieth century was thewarmest century, and the 1990s were the warmestdecade, in the past thousand years. Many Arizonaweather stations reveal a 2º to 5º F average temperatureincrease since 1990, with the rate of increase accelerat-ing in the last quarter century.

The physical changes underway are frightening: Atleast one-third of the snowfield atop Mount Kilimanjarohas melted over the past 12 years, and about 82 percentof the snow has melted since it was first mapped in1912. In Montana, Glacier National Park’s largest glaciersare now only a third the size they were in 1850. Onestudy estimates that all glaciers in the Park could disap-pear within the next 30 years. In the Arctic, the summerice pack has thinned by 30 percent in 40 years, and theglobal extent of Arctic sea ice has been shrinking at arate of three percent per decade.

Notwithstanding the increasingly hollow rhetoric ofthe fossil fuel industry, the scientific consensus is thathuman activities—particularly fossil fuel combustion—are causing these changes. Dr. Robert Watson, pastChair of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) recently said: “The overwhelmingmajority of scientific experts, whilst recognizing thatscientific uncertainties exist, nonetheless believe thathuman-induced climate change is already occurringand that future change is inevitable.” The IPCC—com-posed of hundreds of the world’s leading atmosphericscientists—concluded in a report released last year:“There is new and stronger evidence that most of thewarming observed over the last 50 years is attributableto human activities.”

The primary cause of global warming is increasedconcentrations of greenhouse gases in earth’s atmos-phere, allowing sunlight to enter but preventing heatradiated from the earth’s surface from leaving. Since the

industrial revolution, concentrations of carbon dioxide,the primary greenhouse gas, have increased from 280parts per million (ppm) to 370 ppm in 2000—the high-est concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmospherein the last 400,000 years. By the year 2100, carboncycle models project atmospheric carbon dioxide con-centrations of 549 to 970 ppm—a 90 to 250 percentincrease from pre-industrial levels.

What does it all mean for the Plateau? A recentsurvey of 15 climate models estimates that averagetemperatures during the next century will rise anywherebetween 2 to 10º F in the Southwest. Not one of thesemodels predicts no change or cooling. Precipitation ismore difficult to predict. Globally, precipitation isexpected to increase with higher temperatures andevaporation rates, however regional and seasonalchanges are uncertain at best. The survey of 15 modelspredicts increased summer, fall, and winter precipita-tion throughout much of the Southwest. Yet a morerecent model—the Hadley CM3—predicts drier condi-tions for the next century.

To put these changes in perspective, the 2º to 5º Fwarming that already occurred in the Southwest duringthe twentieth century, coupled with an additional 7º Frise over the next century, would be a change similar inmagnitude to the temperature changes that occurredhere during the retreat of the most recent ice sheetsover 10,000 years ago.

The impacts of this change on the biological diversityof the Colorado Plateau are likely to be profound.Species will either have to evolve rapidly or attempt tomigrate to environs to which they are best suited. Awarmer climate will cause biotic communities to changewith vegetation and other terrestrial species generallymigrating upslope. Atop the San Francisco Peaks or LaSal Mountains, this likely means the loss of the highestand some of the rarest biotic communities as alpinetundra literally disappears off the tops of mountains.Conversely, upslope migration will also result in a gen-eral expansion of the lowest elevation desertenvirons—in other words, desertification.

Unfortunately, many species may not be able tomove quickly enough to colonize new, more suitable

With Little Margin for Change, Will Global Warming Be the Colorado Plateau’s Greatest Conservation Challenge?

Global warming is truly everyone’s problem. There is

perhaps no more democratic environmental issue.

Global warming is truly everyone’s problem. There is

perhaps no more democratic environmental issue.

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areas. Unlike past climate change events, there are nownumerous human-caused obstacles impeding ability ofspecies to evolve and migrate to more hospitable environs.Today’s extinction rates are already 10 to100 timesnatural levels primarily due to habitat loss, and manyof today’s ecosystems are fragmented, degraded, anddecreasingly resilient. In a report “Global Warming andTerrestrial Biodiversity Decline,” World Wildlife Fund(WWF) concluded that while some plants and animalswill be able to keep up with migration rates required byglobal warming, many would not. The Colorado Plateaustands out in the WWF study as one of the regionswhere species migration will be most difficult.

For the Grand Canyon Trust to realize a vision forthe Colorado Plateau as a region characterized byhealthy, restored ecosystems with habitat for all nativeplants and animals, the reduction of greenhouse gases isa challenge we cannot ignore. Global warming is trulyeveryone’s problem. There is perhaps no more democra-tic environmental issue.

For our part, we will continue to work to clean upold, dirty power plants, which simultaneously helpsgive clean energy sources a more level playing field. It iscurrently difficult for clean energy to compete againstenergy systems that offload most of their real costs tothe commons. We will work to prevent new fossil fuelbased power plants—every new plant we build furtherlocks us into a changing climate. On the positive side,there is an enormous amount of opportunity to get theenergy services we need with about half the power wecurrently use. The Trust will work hard on efficiencywith the biggest users on the Plateau. Finally, we workin an area that has the highest solar potential of any-where in the United States, and our vision is to see thePlateau become a leading producer of renewable power.

We all need to do our part to bring about the sys-temic changes needed to address this awesomechallenge. At the Trust, we will continue to tacklethese issues with all the innovation and tenacity wecan muster.

—Taylor McKinnon

...the reduction of greenhouse gases

is a challenge we cannot ignore.

...the reduction of greenhouse gases

is a challenge we cannot ignore.

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As of press time, TEP had a permit, our lawsuit was still pending in federal court, and we have petitioned EPAobjecting to the permit. The saga is sure to continue!

The Springerville Saga Your Clean Air Act and Citizens Enforcement Provisions at Work

The following is a behind-the-scenes account of our efforts to clean up a very dirty coal-fired power plant in the WhiteMountains of Arizona. No names have been changed as there are no innocents to protect.

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) announces its inten-tion to add two new coal-fired generators (units) tothe Springerville Generating Station. TEP and Trustmeet to discuss proposal, with Trust expressingserious concerns and proposing alternatives tobuilding the new units.

During our investigation of TEP’s expansion proposal,we discover TEP did not seem to have Units 1 and 2properly permitted. If true, this would dramaticallyaffect TEP’s proposal for new units. Trust sends letterinforming TEP, Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), and Arizona Department of EnvironmentalQuality (ADEQ), that we intend to file a lawsuit toclean up the existing two units. However, neitherEPA nor the state responds to the letter.

Trust files suit in federal court, allegingSpringerville is operating existing power plantwithout a valid air quality permit, and, so is fardirtier than allowable.

We follow up our lawsuit by formally objectingto a draft permit issued by ADEQ allowing theproposed expansion.TEP goes to Washington. They lobby EPA head-

quarters to support the new permit, regardless ofthe issues raised in our lawsuit or objection letter.Heated discussions ensue between EPA headquar-ters and Region Nine enforcement staff.

EPA Region Nine sends letter objecting to thedraft permit, based on the same issues raised inthe Trust’s lawsuit. Hooray! We feel vindicatedand are very positive about our case.TEP goes to Phoenix. They contact Arizona

Governor Jane Hull and request that she intervene in the case. In a closed-door meeting in Phoenix, TEP and

Governor Hull pressure Region Nine to settle itsobjections. Inexplicably, Region Nine acquiescesand a settlement is reached.

Region Nine sends letter to TEP summarizingthe settlement reached in Phoenix. ADEQimmediately begins changing draft permit toreflect the terms of the settlement.

Trust meets with Region Nine in San Franciscoand strenuously objects to the settlement, because:1) the draft settlement refers only to a vague “rea-sonable time” requirement for reducing emissionsrather than a date-certain deadline; and, 2) thesettlement fails to correct the ongoing emissionsviolations.

Region Nine sends “clarifying” letter to TEP stating that a “reasonable time” means the newunits must become operational in 2006 or 2007(which also means the two existing units getcleaned up by that date).

TEP agrees that the new units will be operational nolater than December 31, 2007. Later that day, TEPsends another letter, retracting the first date, andsubstituting December 31, 2009.

Region Nine sends letter to ADEQ objecting tosignificant portions of new draft permit languageas they do not reflect the terms of the settlement.

ADEQ agrees to change portions of the permit toaddress some of EPA’s concerns. However, at request of TEP, ADEQ is unwilling to change the completiondeadline for Units 3 and 4 back to December 31, 2007.

The Trust files petition with EPA requesting thatthe agency object to the revised permit.

Spring 2001

August 2001

November 9

November 27

Dec & Jan 2002

February 14

Late February

Early March

March 11

March 20

March 26

March 27

March 29

April 3

April 12

April 26 ADEQ issues a final permit, allowing no furtherpublic comment.

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is attributable to sulfates and nitrates, and the nitrogenoxide emissions from San Juan are roughly equivalentto the emissions from 1.5 million cars.

More problems loom on the horizon. In the springof 2000, the New Mexico Environment Department(NMED) informed residents that the Farmington areamay soon exceed its ozone limits. NMED monitors indi-cate that the ozone level in the Farmington area exceedsthe level in Albuquerque. Nitrogen oxide is a necessarycomponent for creating ground-level ozone, which hasbeen linked to tissue decay, the promotion of scar tissueformation, and cell damage by oxidation. It can alsocreate more frequent attacks for individuals with asthma,cause eye irritation, chest pain, coughing, nausea,headaches and chest congestion and discomfort.

In early May, the Trust, along with the Rio GrandeChapter of the Sierra Club, filed a citizens lawsuit withthe goal of significantly reducing pollution from the SanJuan Generating Station by requiring the owners toinstall modern-day pollution controls so that all maybreathe easier.

—Rick Moore

The Four Corners region, where Arizona, Colorado,New Mexico, and Utah join, is a spectacular part of theColorado Plateau. Red, yellow, and white sandstonedomes and buttes, black volcanic necks of erodedvolcanoes, gray and black badlands, and piñon-coveredmesas contrast with a background of towering, snow-capped mountains. It is also where the San JuanGenerating Station, a four-unit, 1,600-megawatt coal-fired power plant is located.

In 2000, San Juan dumped about 14 million tonsof carbon dioxide, 29,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and31,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the Four Cornersairshed. Combined together, San Juan and Four Cornerspower plants emitted more than 145,000 tons of sulfurdioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Mesa Verde, home of Mesa Verde National Park,Shiprock, sacred to Native Americans, and the La Plataand San Juan mountains are frequently shrouded in ayellowish-brown haze reminiscent of urban areas likeAlbuquerque, Phoenix, or Salt Lake City. Indeed, mostof the degraded visibility at Mesa Verde National Park

Trust and Sierra Club File Citizens LawsuitAgainst the San Juan Generating Station

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Concerned Scientists found that if just 20 percent of thenation’s electricity was generated from renewables by2020 (a proposal that failed as an amendment to the Sen-ate’s recently passed energy bill) the six states surroundingthe Colorado Plateau would greatly benefit. CO2 emis-sions would be reduced by 40 percent, nearly $12 billiondollars in new investments would be generated, and theregion’s consumers would save at least $7.7 billion.

Renewable energy is the clear path to minimize theenvironmental impacts of electrical generation, and theTrust is doing our part to help the transition take placeon the Colorado Plateau.

Along with others, the Trust successfully convincedthe Arizona Corporation Commission to adopt an Envi-ronmental Portfolio Standard (EPS), requiring a smallportion (1.1 percent by 2007) of all the electricity soldin Arizona be generated from renewable sources. Evenwith such a modest target, there is great reluctance fromsome Arizona utilities to meet the intent of the policyand actually start producing electricity from renewableenergy technologies.

Over the next year, we plan to bolster the EPS bybringing together power buyers in northern Arizonathat are interested in purchasing power from renewablesources. Aggregating this demand will provide an incen-tive for the local utility to get engaged in producingpower from renewables. Further, this known, aggregateddemand may stimulate investors to get engaged in gen-erating clean power and selling the credits to any utilitythat needs to meet the EPS requirement. We see a mar-velous opportunity for the Native American tribes totake this opportunity to develop renewable generatingcapacity on their lands, and we plan to pursue this ideawith interested tribes.

If Arizona’s EPS is to succeed, businesses and indi-viduals must understand how they can benefit from theprogram. This means public outreach to explain howthe program works and what its benefits are. In addition,Arizona offers tax incentives for renewable energy tech-nologies that are not well known. And the new federalenergy bill (if passed) will likely contain policies topromote renewable energy. The Trust is developing anoutreach program to inform individuals and businessesof the opportunities that exist for them to benefit fromeither installing or purchasing renewable energy.

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Soft Energy Paths for the Colorado Plateau

Cheap, abundant electricity is the lifeblood ofmodern-day life, and it provides enormous benefits.However, our current methods of producing electricitycome with enormous environmental costs. Loss of visi-bility, acid rain, and global warming are driven by theway we choose to generate electricity. Yet we continueto stake our future to damaging energy sources.

For example, on the Colorado Plateau, existingcoal-fired power plants dump more than 143 milliontons of CO2, 294,000 tons of NOX, 218,000 tons ofSO2, and more than two tons of mercury into theregion’s air. Arizona is dependent on coal for almosthalf of it electricity, while 85 percent of New Mexico’selectricity comes from coal. And unbelievable as it mayseem, there are proposals for several new coal-firedpower plants to be built on the Colorado Plateau.

It doesn’t have to be this way

The Colorado Plateau has vast and abundant sourcesof renewable energy that will not foul the air, aggravateglobal warming, require more coal mines or dams, ordictate that we string more power lines across thePlateau’s spectacular landscapes. Photovoltaic panels,solar thermal generators, wind generators, biomass,and geothermal are all examples of renewable energysources that have dramatically fewer environmentalimpacts than the current mix of fossil fuel, hydro, andnuclear generation. There is enough annual sunshineon just a portion of the Colorado Plateau to produceenough electricity to meet all of America’s needs.

Transitioning to these sources can be an economic aswell as an environmental boon. A report by the Union of

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It may be hard to believe, but in less than fiveyears we outgrew the office space in our magnifi-cent old house, so we added a second floor to partof the building with nine new offices. Prior toconstruction, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)held a workshop on energy efficiency and sustain-able building practices for the architect, builder,and interested Trust staff. RMI told us to startwith the building “envelope,” which we did. Theexterior walls have an insulating value of R-60and we retrofitted foam insulation on the existingfirst floor to almost double the insulation valuefor those walls. The windows are “low emissivity”windows, which dramatically reduce both heatfrom the sun on warm days and loss of interiorheat when it is cold outside. We chose carpetmade from recycled products that is designed tobe completely recycled. It is installed in two-footsquares so that wear areas can be replaced with-out having to rip out the entire carpet.

This remodel nicely complements some otherTrust efforts in this area: low-water use landscap-ing and a parking lot that, rather than beingpaved with asphalt, allows water to soak into theground replenishing the local aquifer.

With the remodel done, the Trust is focusing onour next effort: the installation of a photovoltaicarray that will eventually provide for our peakelectricity needs. We also hope to install a watercollection system to catch rainwater for the land-scape gardens.

Many of the articles in this Advocate talk aboutthe impacts of energy development and the needto live in a more ecologically sustainable manner.We all can strive to reduce our energy footprintand to live in a more sustainable way. We intendto continue to reduce our energy and materialsuse and boost recycling. The Trust hopes that wecan provide examples for other interested indi-viduals and organizations.

There are still a number of other barriers that willslow or stall successful implementation of the EPS. Forexample, we need to change the policy governing therate that utilities pay for electricity sent back to the gridfrom households or businesses that generate renewablepower. Arizona currently has “net billing,” meaning thatutilities buy clean, renewable power from independentpower producers at a rate equal to the utility’s cost togenerate power. Typically, this buy-back rate is aboutone-quarter of what the utility then charges that verysame person if they want to purchase power. Netmetering (where an electricity meter simply runs bothdirections) is the better alternative, creating far morefinancial incentive for individuals and businesses toinvest in renewable energy technologies. Changing thisprotectionist policy is a high priority for the Trust.

Conservation organizations must do all that we canto help speed the transition to renewable energy, or wewill all watch our conservation efforts be burned awayby the increasing heat of global warming and subsequentloss of species.

—Rick Moore

New Trust addition to the Lockett Homestead with theNature Conservancy’s office below (left).

Trust Offices at the Homestead ExpandIntegrate Alternative Energyand Environmental Features

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the pristine, undeveloped HD Mountains RoadlessArea,” said Mark Pearson, executive director of SanJuan Citizens Alliance.

Natural gas is no better. A 2001 study by the Envi-ronmental Law Institute on natural gas production inWyoming's Powder River Basin (PRB) concluded: “The51,000 wells coming to the PRB by 2010 will reveal the'dirty' side of this [so-called clean] energy: miles uponmiles of roads; pipelines; power lines; massive reservoirs;numerous compressor stations; and billions of gallonsof produced and wasted water.”

Oil well development is ramping up as well. TheSouthern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a staunch defenderof Utah's redrock country, reports of BLM-approvedleasing and oil exploration activities by numerousenergy companies in sensitive Colorado Plateau lands,including Lockhart Basin, a dramatic wildlife-rich areanear the entrance to Canyonlands National Park andDome Plateau, to the east of Arches National Park in richwildlife habitat. [On a positive note, High Country News(5/13/02) reported on a stay put on the Dome Plateauproject by the Interior Board of Land Appeals; however,such development threats persist in canyon country. Forexample, this spring Kinder Morgan Company submitteda drilling proposal for four additional carbon dioxidewells inside the new Canyon of the Ancients NationalMonument near Cortez, Colorado].

Unfortunately, most of these activities are legal andpermissible on many of the federal lands of the ColoradoPlateau. To stop them, or at the least to minimize them,what is desperately needed are a chorus of voices tospeak up on behalf of protection of these magnificentlandscapes, advocates insisting that the governmentwork harder to find other alternatives to our energyneeds. If we continue our dependence on fossil fuels,despoiled landscapes will continue to be our legacy.

—Steele Wotkyns

Developing New Energy Sources, Leaving the Same Old Mess

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Thumper truck in canyon country, Veritas site.

America’s so-called energy crisis has unleasheda new furor of energy development on the ColoradoPlateau, bringing back eerie reminders of the 50s, 60sand 70s, when the Plateau was badly misused as anenergy colony for the rest of the West. The legacy ofthat era is indelibly etched across the landscape (seemap, pages 12 and 13).

Now, the Plateau is threatened by a new buildup ofenergy infrastructure. The Bush administration is work-ing overtime to encourage the next generation of powerplants, coal mines, coal-bed methane projects, oil andnatural gas fields, and transmission lines. This secondtime around the results could be disastrous for the Col-orado Plateau, with crippling declines in the wildness,ecological health, and integrity of this special place.

The impacts of industrial-scale energy developmentcan be devastating. For example, in the harvesting ofcoal-bed methane from the coal beds where it is trapped,massive quantities of water must be pumped anddumped, water that is highly saline and that causesserious impacts to desert flora. Spider webs of new roadnetworks and pipelines also follow coal-bed methaneproduction. In southwestern Colorado, “at least 125new wells, and 60 miles of new roads, are planned for

“Each generation must deal anew with the ‘raiders,’ with the scramble to use public resources for private profit, and with thetendency to prefer short-run profits to long-run necessities. The nation’s battle to preserve the common estate is far fromwon… On the one hand, science has opened up great new sources of energy… On the other hand, new technical processes anddevices litter the countryside with waste and refuse, contaminate air and water, imperil wildlife and man and endanger thebalance of nature itself.”

[President John F. Kennedy, in the introduction to Stewart Udall’s, The Quiet Crisis, 1963]S

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implement the Grand Canyon Protection Act. Votingwith the majority of stakeholders, the Grand CanyonTrust approved a motion to adopt a new experimentalflows program for implementation this year and next.The program includes a flood release similar to the oneconducted in 1996 by then-Secretary of the InteriorBruce Babbitt. The new program is designed to improveretention of sediment in the Colorado River ecosystemand benefit humpback chub populations.

Altering flows from the dam is a needed first step,but does not go nearly far enough to recover ColoradoRiver resources. In order to fully restore the populationsof native plants and animals within the Colorado Riverecosystem, we need to create conditions that moreclosely mimic the pre-dam river. Because native fishand other native species evolved in waters that weresediment rich and warm, the water coming throughGlen Canyon Dam needs to be made both warmer andmuddier. Thus, the Trust is advocating for a seriouslook at a temperature control device to warm the waterreleased from the dam, and to develop mechanicalmeans to add fine sediment to sediment-starved GlenCanyon Dam water releases. We are working hard to seethat experiments be conducted using these devices.

The Colorado River through Grand Canyon, one ofAmerica’s most spectacular waterways, is losing the bat-tle for ecological survival. We must act now to restore toits natural splendor this treasured river in our mostbeloved park.

—Nikolai Ramsey

Colorado River Resources in Decline!No Celebration on 10-Year Anniversary of Grand Canyon Protection Act

Ten years after Congress passed the Grand CanyonProtection Act (GCPA) in 1992, critical naturalresources on the Colorado River within Grand Canyonare in serious decline. The humpback chub, a residentof the Grand Canyon for the last 2 million years, issliding toward extinction at the same time that GrandCanyon beaches are shrinking.

Scientists estimate that fewer than 2,000 adulthumpback chub survive in Grand Canyon today,whereas a minimun of 150,000 are needed in order toensure the chub’s viability. In less than 40 years sincethe floodgates closed on Glen Canyon Dam, we havedriven this fish to near extinction. Four other fish havealready met that fate in Grand Canyon.

Habitat changes created by the dam and the prolifera-tion of non-native fish are the primary suspects in theloss of these four species and the dramatic demise ofthe humpback chub. The chub evolved over eons inrelatively warm, sediment-rich waters in a systemprone to both flooding and drought. Water releasesfrom Glen Canyon Dam are cold and clear, creatingunfavorable habitat conditions for the humpbackchub and favorable habitat conditions for the chub’snon-native predators.

The Colorado River through Grand Canyon is alsosuffering from significant sediment decline. GlenCanyon Dam blocks nearly all the sediment that oncemoved down the Colorado River. Recent scientific stud-ies have shown that sediment coming into the riverbelow the dam from tributaries is not stored in the bedof the river, as previously believed, but continues towash downriver into Lake Mead. Consequently, if weare to be successful in using high water flows from thedam to build beaches and restore habitat, these floodreleases need to be closely coordinated with the timingof sediment flows into the river below the dam.

This past April we scored a significant victory forconservation within the Glen Canyon Dam AdaptiveManagement Program (AMP), a program put in place to

The humpback chub, a resident of the Grand

Canyon for the last 2 million years, is sliding

toward extinction at the same time that Grand

Canyon beaches are shrinking.

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Water, water…nowhere. Four years of droughthave left the springs, creeks, and rivers of the ColoradoPlateau at record low levels. As I write in late April, theColorado River is flowing just 22 percent of normal andthe Virgin River is at 11 percent. There is no snowpackin the mountains to make even a tiny spring flood. Therivers are trickling into summer. A few more years of thisand the dry, bony country might shrug our human set-tlements off its back like sand off a desert tortoise. If youdoubt that is possible, go take another look at the desertlandscape the eons have made here: those bare hills andancient junipers have seen far worse droughts than this.

You might expect that such an event would promptintense study of the carrying capacity of this region:how many of us can the land really support in the badtimes? You would be wrong. Instead, we are planning,once again, to control nature. Major pipelines are on thedrawing boards that will suck Colorado River water tofast growing cities like Denver and St. George, allowingthem to ignore the constraints of climate and geographyfor a while longer, but raising the costs of the eventualday of reckoning. Everybody knows that paper waterrights on the River far exceed actual, wet water; yeteverybody is grabbing for their share. The story of theproposed Lake Powell to St. George pipeline illustratesthe way proponents of these projects typically fail tovisualize a future any of us might want to live in.

Southwest Utah’s mild climate, recreational opportu-nities, and high quality of life have made it one of thenation’s fastest growing areas. Over the last 20 years,St. George has grown from a small town to a city with85,000 residents. The population expansion is expectedto continue at high rates far into the future: local juris-dictions are planning for a build-out of 328,000 peoplein Washington County over the next 50 years, a scenarioin which the area will be subdivided from end to end.Nobody has asked the people of St. George whetherthey want to live in a city of that size, nor attemptedto gauge the effect on the quality of life. Instead, theWashington County Water Conservancy Districtcommissioned a study by Boyle Engineering to find

out how soon extra water will be needed to accommo-date the growth.

The Boyle Report includes several possible popula-tion projections through 2040, ranging from a low of203,000 up to a staggering 553,000—fully 68 percenthigher than the total build-out local municipalities arecontemplating. The exaggeration is compounded bylumping together all public water sources (residential,commercial, industrial, and municipal) in a calculationshowing that each resident uses 335 gallons every day,making them among the most wasteful in the West. Inreality, that is a slander: per capita residential consump-tion is a comparatively thrifty 212 gallons per day.Nonetheless, the higher figure is multiplied by popula-tion projections to calculate future water needs. Notsurprisingly, the Boyle Report finds that when the high-est population projection is combined with wastefuluse, there will be a need for development of additionalwater supplies. The report calls for construction of awater pipeline to Lake Powell by 2035.

The Grand Canyon Trust questions whether thepipeline is necessary or desirable. Other, cheapersources of water are available. Agriculture presentlyconsumes 82,000 acre-feet of water annually, nearlythree times as much water as all residential, municipal,and industrial uses combined. Most of the farmlandwill be developed, even in moderate growth scenarios,yet the Boyle Report supposes that only 14 percent ofthe irrigation water will be converted to other uses. Ifhalf of the agricultural water were available to servicegrowth, there would be no need for a pipeline evenfor the largest projected populations. Similarly, annualgroundwater recharge in the area is estimated to be152,000 acre-feet—more than twice the amount thepipeline is designed to carry. The Grand Canyon Trustdoes not pretend to know if a pipeline will be needed in50 years, but we do not believe the Washington CountyWater Conservancy District knows, either. At $250 mil-lion projected cost, it makes sense to begin a long-rangevisioning process to see what kind of community theresidents want before committing to a pipeline.

Asking Important Questions St. George Pipeline

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Why raise questions about a popular water supplyproject during a drought? We are not just masochistswho love to be hated. The Trust is a guardian of thepublic land treasures east and south of St. George. Apipeline has potential to spread sprawl from the city allthe way to Big Water near Lake Powell. We will beworking to make sure no pipeline is built that threatensthe integrity of that wild landscape.

—Bill Hedden

The story of the proposed Lake Powell to St. George pipeline

illustrates the way proponents of these projects typically fail to

visualize a future any of us might want to live in.

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A proposed water supply pipeline route near here? GrandStaircase-Escalante National Monument.

Lin

Ald

er