ACTION ALERT: Grand Canyon: Glen Canyon Dam Comments Due Jan 31!
Posted: 01/27/2012
By: Megan Hooker
The future of the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam will be decided in the not so distant future, and your voice is important in shaping the process! If you’ve ever been through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado, hope to in the future, or simply care about the health of this iconic place, these decisions will impact you directly.
The Bureau of Reclamation and National Park Service are developing their Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) for their Long Term Experimental and
Management Plan (LTEMP) for the operation of Glen Canyon Dam. Your scoping comments now
will help to ensure that the management alternatives considered in the LTEMP EIS are protective
of the values that make The Canyon a special place. This is the first time that the
operation of Glen Canyon Dam has been evaluated in over 15 years, and the decisions made in this
process will inform dam operations for 15-20 years in the future.
Please take a few moments to tell the agencies that the future of the Colorado River and
Grand Canyon are important to you! They need to know that hydropower and water
supply interests need to be balanced with environmental, recreational and cultural values.
Consider telling the agencies that…
- Future operations of Glen Canyon Dam should comply with the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992.
- Beaches are important to wildlife and recreationists alike, and the dam should be operated in a way that builds beaches through high flow events when new sediment enters the system, and protects the beaches that have been built through steady flows in between these events.
- Solid science, not hydropower and water supply interests, should drive these management decisions. The Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) is the leading entity studying the River, and should be an integral part of both developing the LTEMP EIS and monitoring and informing adaptive management decisions in the future.
- It is important to protect cultural sites in the Canyon, and the LTEMP should integrate these values.
- The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program should be more balanced in the future, with greater representation of cultural, ecological and recreational interests.
- Flows relating to water supply and hydropower need to be implemented in a way that support, protect, and when possible, restore downstream values of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon.
- Ideas that you have about alternatives that they should consider in the EIS.
How to Comment:
Submit your comments online at: http://ltempeis.anl.gov/involve/commentintro/index.cfm
Or send them via regular mail, postmarked by January 31st, 2012 to:
Glen Canyon Dam LTEMP EIS Scoping
Argonne National Laboratory
9700 S. Cass Ave – EVS/240
Argonne, IL 60439
American Whitewater joined with Grand Canyon River Guides,
Grand Canyon River Runners Association, Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association, and Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association to submit joint comments
about the LTEMP EIS on January 10th. You can view our comments by clicking on the document link
on the right sidebar. AW has submitted additional
comments, and we encourage you to do the same!