Flood plan worries Colorado River guides

PHOENIX — When federal authorities announced plans to manufacture a flood in the Grand Canyon this month to restore beaches along the Colorado River, Wendy Gunn braced for the inevitable pandemonium.

Co-owner of Lees Ferry Anglers, a river guide business catering to fishing enthusiasts, Gunn has been fielding 15 to 20 phone calls and e-mails daily in the past week from visitors worrying that a flood will mean fewer fish.

"Beneficial flood is an oxymoron. When you call it a flood, people think it's this huge wall of water," Gunn said.

The potential water flow will come from the opening of Glen Canyon Dam, upstream of the Lees Ferry fishery and the Marble Canyon area.

Gunn and her husband are members of a small community that relies on visitors to the river and the fishery at Lees Ferry. They say the publicity surrounding the proposed 60-hour water flow, which is set to begin March 5, has resulted in some canceling or questioning of trips in the days following the event. With fewer people calling to reserve guides and lodging, there is an unknown financial loss, too.

"I've been able to ease people's minds about it but still ... how many people won't book and won't call — that I just don't know about. I can't imagine how that hurts our business," Gunn said.

When all nine guides are working, there are generally about 200 bookings a month. The company currently has 118 for March. With guides not going out during the flooding, which will stretch from Wednesday into midday Saturday, most of the weekend will be lost. That's a loss of $425 a day for each guide, Gunn said. The company's hotel, restaurant and boat rentals also would suffer.

"Every one of the businesses in Marble Canyon strongly opposed the timing of this," said Gunn's husband, Terry, co-owner and a guide. "This is right in the beginning of the high season. It's sort of like asking retailers to close a week before Christmas."

Barbara Foster, whose husband, Dave, owns Marble Canyon Outfitters, a flyfishing guide business near Lees Ferry, said the company's March bookings are half of what they were at the same time last year. But she conceded some of that may be because of the economy. The couple say most of their regular patrons haven't shown any knee-jerk reaction to the planned flooding.

"A lot of them are familiar about the rhetoric so they just don't come," Foster said.