From Deseret News archives:
River storage act sees 50th year
Crowd celebrates at Glen Canyon Dam
"More importantly, the Colorado River Storage Project Act passed Congress," said Rick Gold, director of the Upper Colorado Region of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, to a crowd of about 70 people gathered Thursday at Glen Canyon Dam to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the act's passage.
Glen Canyon Dam was one of four initial water-storage units completed under the federal law. Construction on the massive project started in October 1956. Seven years later, Lake Powell began to fill as the Colorado River backed up for miles behind the new dam.
Other storage units approved in the CRSP Act are Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River in Utah; the Wayne N. Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River in Colorado, which includes three smaller dams; and Navajo Dam on the San Juan River in New Mexico.
"Farmers in the (Upper Colorado River) basin predicted there would be a need for water resource management, that there would be growth," said Mark Limbaugh, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science in the U.S. Department of the Interior. "I wonder if they realized how significant that growth would be."
Today, he said, millions of people in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada and California rely on CRSP projects to deliver water and provide power.
"The recent drought demonstrated the entire river storage system works," Limbaugh said. "We all serve as stewards of this river system."
But the massive federal water projects that the act authorized remain controversial among environmentalists who say the dams have wreaked havoc on the ecosystems of the rivers. They also argue that the giant reservoirs waste water through evaporation and seepage.
Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert praised the "can-do" attitude of pioneers who settled the arid West and built irrigation systems, eventually coaxing the desert to "blossom as a rose."
"Maybe what we are really celebrating today is the indomitable spirit of man," Herbert said. "Maybe what we're really celebrating is the attitude that if we put our minds to it, we can do it for the benefit of future generations."
E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com
