Glen Canyon Dam

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, STEWART L. UDALL, Secretary Bureau of Reclamation, Floyd E. Dominy, Commissioner
THE PROJECT AND THE DAM
GLEN CANYON FLORIDA PINE RIVER EXT NAVAJO HAMMOND LA BARGE SEEDSKADEE LYMAN FLAMING GORGE CENTRAL UTAH EMERY COUNTY SILT PAONIA SMITH FORK CURECANTI
The Glen Canyon Dam, Powerplant, and Reservoir, which will be known as Lake Powell in honor of the western explorer and geologist, John Wesley Powell, are the principal storage and power features of the Upper Colorado River Storage project. The dam will be on the Colorado River in Arizona, 13 river miles below the Utah border. Lake Powell will store about 28,000,000 acre feet of water—next in size to Lake Mead, downstream, America’s largest man-made lake—to help solve a water resource development problem in the Colorado River Basin.
The crux of the problem is the division of the river’s water between the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River, as provided by an interstate compact. The volume of water flowing down the Colorado fluctuates sharply from year to year. Consequently, there must be long-term holdover storage capacity in order to meet downstream needs and compact requirements—including requirements for Mexico under an international treaty—and still permit the Upper Basin States to deplete the river for upstream use.
This problem will be solved by construction of a system of storage dams and reservoirs in the Upper Basin, of which Glen Canyon, the largest, is one of four initial units authorized. Only 15 miles above the dividing line between the Upper and Lower Basins, it will store no water for use upstream or in the immediate vicinity of the dam, but is the principal unit storing water to regulate the river and thereby fulfill compact commitments to the Lower Basin. The sale of hydroelectric energy generated at the multipurpose dams will return practically all of the cost of the project and a large part of the cost of 11 participating irrigation projects authorized for initial Upper Basin development. That, in general, is how Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado and three other initial dams on its tributaries will aid in developing the area. The participating projects just referred to, and scattered throughout the Upper Basin (11 of them authorized for construction), will irrigate about 130,000 acres in new farms and improve irrigation on about 230,000 acres in old ones. Some 25 other projects are under various phases of study. Farming, in consequence, will greatly increase. Water from the 4 big storage reservoirs will, as planned, turn generators of about 1,200,000-kilowatt capacity, and industry will use the power. Mineral deposits of inestimable value, uranium among them, will be mined. Flood control and navigation on the Colorado will be improved, and the nation’s playgrounds will be greatly enlarged, for some of the world’s finest recreation places will lie along the shores of the reservoirs or lakes that will form behind the dams.