Lake Powell: Half empty or half full?

LAKE POWELL — Much reduced from its historic high-water level, the question can be posed: Is Lake Powell half empty or half full?

And the answer depends upon whom you ask.

Those who live and work near the huge reservoir straddling the Utah/Arizona border worry that the outside world's perception, at least, is that the half-empty desert lake — a tourist magnet — is drying up, like many much-shallower reservoirs in the drought-stricken West.

"Some people think we're just a mud puddle," says Bob Seney, vice president of operations for Lake Powell Resorts and Marinas, a concessionaire.

The low-water stigma and the stagnant economy are both to blame for business that's down 15 percent to 20 percent for his company, he said.

Some environmentalists, on the other hand, seem energized by Lake Powell's declining depth, even though it is a particularly deep reservoir and is nowhere near empty. The Colorado River's Glen Canyon and its tributaries have been mostly submerged beneath the lake's waters for decades — "full pool" was achieved in 1980 — and the falling water level has revealed long-lost caverns and red-rock formations, most whitewashed by the rising-and-falling reservoir's "bathtub ring."

Deseret News graphic Lake Powell details Requires Adobe Acrobat.

The revelations are increasing public awareness of what treasures generally lie below the water, says Chris Peterson, director of the Glen Canyon Institute of Salt Lake City.

Lake Powell is named after John Wesley Powell, the scientist/adventurer who led two hazardous rowboat trips down the the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869 and 1871. He named this stretch of the Colorado "Glen Canyon" because of its "curious ensemble of wonderful features — carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments."

The Glen Canyon Institute is dedicated to getting the government to carefully study the value of Lake Powell — and to ultimately breaching 4-decade-old Glen Canyon Dam and draining the lake it has created.

The dropping water levels, Peterson believes, haven't hurt their cause.

"It has made people start to ask questions."

For tourists still drawn to half-full Lake Powell, the lower water level hardly seems a detraction.

"It was magnificent," said one member of a group of eight visitors from Washington, D.C., who spent three days on a houseboat in mid-September. The canyon walls were higher, they agreed, yet there was still plenty of water in the lake.

And the Escalante River Canyon, a major tributary, was a treat to behold with low water, they said.

Fewer visitors?

Indeed, those who visit the changing lake are apt to find signs of both rebirth and death in the canyons.