The Bureau of Reclamation Needs You!

By Amy Seigel, 1-05-07

If you’re a fisherperson, a paddler, or just someone who cares about the health of river ecosystems, you might think about taking some time out tonight to head downtown and tell the powers that be just what you’d like to see happen on the Colorado River in the next ten years. According to an article in today’s Salt Lake Tribune, the Bureau of Reclamation will be seeking public input on a new long-term experimental plan for managing the Glen Canyon Dam and downstream ecosystem of the Colorado River during the next decade.

This new proposal, which Dennis Kubly, chief of the bureau's adaptive management group, calls “an extension” of the plan the agency adopted in 1995, will involve much more extensive test-flow experiments, and will be “bigger than anything we've done in the past and is likely to cover a longer period of time. This could last upward of 10 years,” said Kulby. The new plan will likely involve some changes to dam operations and possible modifications to the dam's intake structures, along with the removal of non-native fish species below the dam. But the biggest part of the new plan involves test-flow experiments designed to flush sediment downstream to create backwaters and sand bars—important elements in the habitat of native fish species of the lower Colorado such as the endangered humpback chub.

Indeed, the humble chub is largely to thank for the bureau’s renewed focus on managing these ecosystems downstream of Glen Canyon. According to a 2005 report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey, the number of humpback chub continued to decline, and efforts to restore the river habitat below the dam to something close to its natural state “have not produced the hoped-for restoration and maintenance” of endangered fish species. In response to this report, five environmental organizations brought a lawsuit against the bureau which charged that the agency failed to meet the requirements of the 1992 Glen Canyon Protection Act.

Richard Ingebretson, founder and board member of the Glen Canyon Institute, one of the groups involved in the suit, told the Tribune that “this lawsuit was an effort to get [Reclamation] to step up to the plate and live by the regulations. They just haven't been doing everything they were supposed to be doing in terms of the adaptive management plan.” He added that “In the short run, the adaptive management plan can help with the preservation of species on the Colorado River, so we're very interested in this.”

And while it is unfortunate that it took a lawsuit to persuade the Bureau of Reclamation that more needs to be done to protect the ecosystem of the lower Colorado, at least things now seem to be moving in the right direction. “What we're trying to do is marry environmental compliance with adaptive management to make a better process out of it,” said Kulby. “This is the next building block.” Now all we can hope is that this next round of experiments in rehabilitating the Colorado and its aquatic inhabitants isn’t too little too late.

Take the opportunity to add your two cents to the development of this “building block” tonight at the public hearing from 6-8 p.m. at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, 255 W. Temple, in Salon I. [End of article]