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Show SIERRA CLUBBED The Rise, Fall and Emasculation of "The Glen Canyon Group" By Ken Sleight & Jim Stiles. Authors’ note: to avoid ‘pronoun confusion’ we have referred to ourselves in the third person. it, "The idea of de-commissioning dams is no longer a crazy idea...it’s on the table now." For 40 years, David Brower, the former Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has been historic announcement. At the request of David Brower, the former Executive Director, now Two weeks later, on November 16, 1996, the national board of the Sierra Club made an a passionate and sometimes controversial leader of the environmental movement; now in his eighties, his impact is still felt. In 1996, Brower eloquently fought for and succeeded in convincing the national Sierra Club board to publicly support efforts to drain Lake Powell, the massive reservoir that in 1963 flooded Glen Canyon in southern Utah. But in September 1999, as members of the proposed "Glen Canyon Group" of the Sierra Club argued the wisdom of that board decision, a twenty-year member of the Club made a startling accusation. Most members of the group were enthusiastically supportive of Glen Canyon restoration, but not Mike Binyon. As the debate around the table heated up, Binyon dropped a bombshell. "You know how Brower talked the board into passing that resolution don’t you? He walked into the meeting unannounced and slapped a check on the table!" We looked at each other in stunned disbelief. "How much was the check for?" we asked. Binyon replied, "I heard it was for a quarter of a million dollars." 84, and a board member himself, the national board considered and unanimously passed a resolution to "advocate the draining of the reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam." The nation’s largest environmental group had thrown its support behind a remarkable and visionary idea-—to fix a tragic mistake, a mistake for which the Sierra Club itself felt partially to blame. David Brower came to Utah to present his proposal before a public function sponsored by the Glen Canyon Institute. A standing room only crowd of 1,600 came to hear him speak in Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah where he outlined this daring proposal. The proposal was based on the fact that the Bureau of Reclamation studies show almost a million acre-feet, or 8 percent of the Colorado River's flow, disappears annually between the stations that record the reservoir's inflow and outflow. Almost 600,000 acre-feet alone are presumed lost to evaporation. A million acre-feet could just about meet the domestic David Brower says it’s ridiculous fiction. For the last eight months, this is the kind of animosity, emotion and deception that has RESOLUTION OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ‘Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club plagued a very frustrating attempt to establish a grass roots activist group of the Sierra Club September 18, 1997 in southern Utah. How it will ultimately be resolved remains to be seen; how it got this far is the subject of this story. : national Sierra Club: and WHEREAS at present, done its research i A BRIEF HISTORY... For almost a century, the Sierra Club has been fighting the construction of dams in the West. In 1913, John Muir, a passionate and eloquent defender of wilderness and the founder of the Sierra Club, learned of plans to dam the Hetch Hetchy River in the High Sierras. Hetch Hetchy was called the “other Yosemite" by many and Muir was determined to save it from flooding. That summer he wrote, "The people are aroused. Be of good cheer, watch, si i iti i ‘ y i Compact can be rewritten to satisfy all of the affected states; and i i ing the Colorado River b than attempting 10 i i i 1997, and does «ot ‘it | | pray and fight." Muir waged a long and ultimately futile battle to save Hetch Hetchy. Today the river lies buried in a watery grave; Muir mourned the magnificent canyon’s death to the day of his own. It would not be the only canyon lost to the dam and the diversion tunnel and decisions; IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED: L.__Reiection ‘of MOU, The draft Memorandum of U: September 14, 1997 is rejected. Ao more time, money or other resource ing OF i bill has been pa: has completed its work. | hydroelectric power. In the years and decades to come, countless untamed rivers across the West would be plugged, flooded and destroyed by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers. In fact, based on a BuRec master plan for the Colorado River Basin in the late 1940s, not a single mile of free-flowing river would have survived their dambuilding dementia. In the early 1950s, The Bureau set its eyes on the Green River at a place called Echo Park near Dinosaur National Monument. The proposed dam was to be the centerpiece of the Colorado River Storage Project, and would have flooded millions of acres of spectacular river canyons. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups opposed the dam, waged a dramatic David and Goliath battle against the Bureau and, to the surprise of many (even them) the Sierra Club won. But as a compromise, the Club agreed not to oppose the jing discussed i iver Task Force B 2.__Media Events, The Sierra Club should not participate in any further media evehts The Sierra Club, and Adam scheduled for October 8, 1997. Werbach specifically, should withdraw from the media event i needs of some 4 million people. Based on present water costs, this is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A gigantic waste of water! Brower reasoned that the sooner we begin the Glen Canyon restoration efforts, the sooner the recovery of the beauties of the Glen Canyon--such as the Cathedral in the Desert, Hidden Passage, Music Temple and many other beautiful and enchanting canyons. construction of another dam at an alternative site---Glen Canyon. As the great photographer Elliot Porter would lament years later, It was "The Place No One Knew." In the mid-50s, the Colorado Plateau was the most isolated section of the United States and very few had any idea what was there. Months later, when Brower and others made a trip to Glen Canyon to see what they had given away, they were horrified. Construction of the dam began in the summer of 1956 and seven years later, as work neared completion, the diversion gates at the dam were sealed and the free-flowing river in Glen Canyon was cut off. To this day, Brower has never forgiven himself. DECADES OF FRUSTRATION AND A GLIMMER OF HOPE The disaster at Glen Canyon would not be forgotten. Orly a relative handful of river runners and tourists saw the canyon before the reservoir flooded it all, but the memory of that magic place was emblazoned forever in their hearts and minds. Even as the dam was being built, Ken Sleight helped organize the Friends of Glen Canyon to stop the Bureau from completing its work. But the group lacked the power or numbers to make anything but a token gesture of opposition. Later, author Ed Abbey would make sure that none of us ever forgot this monumentak loss of one of Nature’s great masterpieces in countless books and essays. And Katie Lee, whose music and stories of those glorious days can just tear your heart out, still actively campaigns for the draining of the reservoir she refuses to call a "lake." . But it all seemed Quixotic, the wild dreams of dedicated dreamers. For those of us who stood at the dam with Ed Abbey 15 years ago and chanted "Drain the Lake!" and prayed for that "precision earthquake" that Abbey was fond of saying, we could take comfort in the justice of our cause, but found little if any reason to hope that our cause might ever be taken seriously. In 1996, everything changed. Dr. Richard Ingebretsen founded the Glen Canyon Institute (GCI), a non-profit organization dedicated to the scientific and economic examination of the reservoir which, he believed, would ultimately support the de-commissioning of the dam. Ingebretsen, at first glance, seems an unlikely candidate for such a role. A native of Utah and a devout lifelong member of the LDS church, he is nonetheless passionate in his conviction that the construction of Glen Canyon dam was one of the great environmental tragedies of our time. In October 1996, leading scientists, engineers and Bureau of reclamation officials gathered at GCI’s second annual meeting and the ensuing discussions were remarkable. According to Ingebretsen, "it became clear that replacing the reservoir with a free-flowing river...would make water delivery more efficient downstream and eliminate the nearly one million acre feet of water that is lost each year at Lake Powell." As one BuRec engineer put DISSENSION IN THE RANKS Not everyone in the Sierra Club was quick to embrace the Restoration Resolution. In Utah, in fact, the idea was met with downright hostility. Anne Wechsler, chapter chair at the time, wrote an article in the Chapter’s newsletter, The Utah Sierran, critical of the national board’s policy. Recently, Wechsler made it clear she was expressing more than just a personal opinion. "Since there had been a unanimous vote (by the Utah ExCom) against adopting a policy to drain Lake Powell, I was writing for the Chapter, not myself." Wechsler traveled to San Francisco to the Sierra Club’s annual meeting and appeared before the board to demand that it rescind its position on Glen Canyon. The Chapter believed that it had not been properly consulted before the board acted. But after her remarks, there was not so much as a motion by the board to reconsider its position, and its support of Glen Canyon Restoration remained unequivocal. ' In an attempt to resolve differences between the Chapter and National, a "Draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Sierra Club Board of Directors and the Utah Chapter" was presented to the Utah Executive Committee (ExCom). In part, the MOU said, "Draining Lake Powell is the one official position of the Sierra Club. The essential central mission of the Task Force is to direct the Club’s efforts to implement this policy." Further, it explained that "efforts to promote the draining of Lake Powell should be conducted in concert with..our Utah BLM wilderness campaign and defending the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument." : The MOU was discussed by the Utah Chapter on September 14, 1997 and four days later, the ExCom summarily rejected it. Instead the renegade Chapter passed a unilateral "Resolution of the Executive Committee." It said, in part: "WHEREAS the Executive Committee of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club is © concerned about the timing of the national Sierra Club’s Lake Powell media campaign and negative impacts of the campaign on the Utah wilderness effort...the National Sierra Club should spend no more time, money, or other resources promoting or implementing its Lake Powell policy, and should not participate in any further media events to promote.the draining of Lake Powell, until after a good Utah wilderness bill is passed." The September 18, 1997 resolution claimed that the Sierra Club was in the “embarrassing position of not yet having answers to tough media questions." The Chapter was adamant in its opposition; the national board just as unwavering in its support of the 1996 resolution. It was a stalemate. For years, perhaps even to this day, very few Sierra Club members.in Utah even understand that their own chapter leaders are at odds with the Club’s national |