After five years of intensive lobbying by the Sierra Club, the commissioner for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recommended against building more dams on the Colorado River. The fight led to increased public awareness concerning environmental and preservationist issues. It also led to a tenfold increase in the Sierra Club’s membership during the controversy.
When, on the final day of his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order creating Marble Canyon National Monument, he ended forty years of fantasies about development of the Colorado River for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. From its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies on the Continental Divide to the point where it discharges into the Gulf of California, the Colorado River drops 14,000 feet and passes through uniquely beautiful sandstone canyons that are visited annually by thousands of tourists. Until January 20, 1969, those tourists included a steady stream of engineers and dam designers attracted to the canyon in hope of completing the process begun with the construction of the Hoover Dam.
As the major river system in the American Southwest, the Colorado had been the object of attention from the Interior Department’s
Arizona officials, for example, tended to view Hoover Dam with dismay, not awe, as they witnessed both water and electrical power from the facility being sent west to Los Angeles rather than east into their own state. Thus, while Bureau of Reclamation officials viewed Hoover Dam with pride—it was the most ambitious project undertaken by the bureau in its brief history—state and federal authorities continued to quarrel over how much water should go where.
By the 1950’s, the irrigation schemes and political negotiations had crystallized into one grand design, the Colorado River Storage Project
The Bureau of Reclamation wanted to follow construction of Glen Canyon Dam
A stereoscopic photograph of the Colorado River flowing through Marble Canyon in 1872.
The second site, Marble Canyon,
Floyd Dominy, the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, knew some environmentalists would protest, but he was not worried. Brower, executive director for the Sierra Club, had testified in favor of Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950’s. He had since changed his mind about any additional dams on the Colorado. Glen Canyon had been a compromise to save Dinosaur National Monument, but for Brower and the Sierra Club, the days of compromising had ended. Under Brower’s leadership, the organization launched a massive Save the Grand Canyon movement that garnered support from all levels of society.
Full-page advertisements ridiculing the Bureau of Reclamation’s claims that reservoirs would make previously difficult to reach areas more accessible to visitors appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. When the Internal Revenue Service rescinded the Sierra Club’s tax-exempt status, claiming that advertisements that asked “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer to the ceiling?” constituted attempts to influence legislation, public support for the Sierra Club increased dramatically. By 1967, Secretary Udall was ready to reverse himself. The Johnson administration withdrew all plans for Marble Canyon and put plans for Bridge Canyon Dam on indefinite hold. Congressional debate over the Central Arizona Project continued until 1968, when authorization legislation finally passed specifically excluding any new dam construction. Electricity required would be obtained from coal-fired power plants. Finally, on January 20, 1969, Johnson signed the executive order creating Marble Canyon National Monument
The battle over the CRSP proved to be the turning point for environmental preservation versus hydroelectric development on the Colorado River. First with Echo Park and then with the Bridge and Marble Canyon dams, environmental activists managed to outwit and outlast the dam-builders in the Bureau of Reclamation. Previous encounters had been less successful. A young Sierra Club had mounted a futile opposition to the Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite National Park in California. Echo Park, while definitely a turning point in environmental preservation, had involved a trade-off: Glen Canyon instead of Echo Park. With Bridge and Marble canyons, the environmental movement made it clear it would not trade off one piece of the river to save another.
In addition, the controversy over Marble and Bridge canyons deeply affected the attitudes of various policy makers involved in the process. While some Western state politicians, such as Wayne Aspinall of Colorado, remained determinedly in favor of water projects, others, such as Morris Udall and Stewart Udall, changed their minds. Both Udalls had been vehemently prodevelopment when the debate over the proper use of the river’s water began. During the course of the debate, however, the Udalls made the transition from conservationists to preservationists.
The Udalls were not alone. The debate over the Colorado marked a change in the way many Americans viewed the environment. After decades of seeing the environment only as a source of raw materials to be exploited for development, more and more members of the general public were ready to agree with the Sierra Club and David Brower that enough was enough. A project would no longer automatically be seen as “progress” simply because a technology was feasible or a dam was buildable. By rejecting dams in the Grand Canyon, the public had agreed to set a limit to growth in the Colorado watershed. With the reservoir for Glen Canyon Dam providing the last large artificial lake on the Colorado, the amount of water supplied to cities and agriculture had been capped. Planners of the Central Arizona Project had envisioned a series of dams that would store several years’ worth of water in case of drought. Now, downstream users had to face a different reality and plan accordingly.
The battle over Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon dams also proved decisive for Brower and the Sierra Club. Prior to the debate over the Grand Canyon, the Sierra Club had been a respected but little-known organization with a membership based primarily in California. The organization had taken public positions in the past, such as in 1943 when it opposed the repeal of the Antiquities Act, but Brower’s lobbying activities were far more flamboyant than most Sierra Club members were accustomed to. Brower’s efforts to publicize the threat to the canyon both heightened public recognition of the Sierra Club and altered its image. Membership dramatically increased—from seven thousand to seventy thousand—as Americans wanting to support the Sierra Club’s preservation efforts joined the organization. At the same time, the increasingly politicized image of the group disturbed many longtime members. In 1969, a majority of the board of directors voted to remove Brower from his position as executive director. Despite the growth in membership, conservative board members were convinced Brower was alienating too many powerful people in business and government. After sixteen tumultuous years with the organization, Brower was fired.
Brower responded to termination by founding a new organization, Friends of the Earth
In addition, the battle over the fate of the Colorado River demonstrated the value of delaying tactics. When the dams were first proposed, Brower argued that they were unnecessary for electrical power generation. Five years later, even erstwhile supporters of Marble Canyon Dam agreed that it made more sense to generate electricity with a coal-fired steam plant than with a new hydroelectric facility.
Finally, preventing construction of the dams preserved hundreds of miles of the Colorado River for visitors to enjoy as a natural river. The tourists who raft down the Colorado are not experiencing quite the same river that early explorers did—regulation of the river’s flow by Glen Canyon Dam eliminates many of the seasonal fluctuations in water level—but the Colorado is still a natural stream complete with the flora and fauna that can live only on the banks of a wild river. Beavers still build their dens in the riverbanks, and trees and other vegetation native to the Southwest still grow in the side canyons. The creation of Marble Canyon National Monument in 1969 was followed a few years later by an expansion of the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. The Colorado River is now protected from any future development for hundreds of miles. The primary danger to the Colorado ecosystem is too many tourists. With proper stewardship, however, most of the river is expected to remain unspoiled for generations to come.
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Cole, Edwin. Listen, Bright Angel. New York: Duenn, Sloan and Pearch, 1946. May be difficult to find but is worth the effort. Colorful historic vignettes make the conditions in the Grand Canyon before any dam development occurred seem very real to the average reader. -
Krutch, Joseph Wood. Grand Canyon: Today and All Its Yesterdays. New York: William Sloane, 1968. Combines a history of the exploration of the Colorado River with discussions of geology and ecology of the region. -
Martin, Russell. A Story That Stands Like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West. 1991. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999. First published in 1989, this book provides a historical look at the dam and its battled-over canyon. Paints a vivid portrait of the Bureau of Reclamation and the agency’s efforts to dam the Colorado River. -
Miller, Char, ed. Water in the West: A High Country News Reader. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2000. Essays explore the politics of water in the western United States. Includes discussion of the federal bureaucracy, environmentalism, water projects, and more. -
Miller, Scott K. “Undamming Glen Canyon: Lunacy, Rationality, or Prophecy.” In Stanford Environmental Law Journal 19, no. 1 (January, 2000): 122-203. An extensive, detailed report on the Glen Canyon Dam and Colorado River controversies. Includes comprehensive footnotes with bibliographical references. An invaluable resource. -
Pearson, Byron E. Still the Wild River Runs: Congress, the Sierra Club, and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Argues that the Sierra Club played a far lesser role in shaping the legislative outcome of the Colorado River damming controversy. -
Schrepfer, Susan R., ed. Richard M. Leonard: Mountaineer, Lawyer, Environmentalist. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. An oral history of the Sierra Club and its efforts to fight development on the Colorado River. -
Sturgeon, Stephen C. The Politics of Western Water: The Congressional Career of Wayne Aspinall. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Presents a biographical history of Wayne Aspinall, a prodevelopment Democratic congressmember from Colorado, who was involved in wilderness, environmental, and preservationist legislation in the 1960’s. Aspinall also had been opposed to the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Brower Becomes Executive Director of the Sierra Club
Mission 66 Plan Is Implemented
Echo Park Dam Proposal Is Defeated
Controversial Glen Canyon Dam Is Completed
Brower Forms Friends of the Earth
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 Is Signed