For Star subscribers: Without curbs in water use, Lake Powell seems likely to keep falling, squeezing a multi-billion-dollar recreation economy already damaged by the pandemic.
Editor's note: This is the third of six stories for"Colorado River reckoning: Not enough water," an investigative series by the Arizona Daily Star that observes, at length, the future of the Colorado River.
People are also reading… Then, federal forecasters predict Powell's water level most likely will again fall below 3,525, at which the ramp stops short of reaching the water and can't be used at all, and will stay that way for at least another five months. The ramp was closed to houseboats and other large vessels in mid-November, when the lake dropped to 3,529 feet.
The continuing decline of Powell has raised an almost endless list of questions about how authorities should respond. The lake is so low that most of its boating ramps are closed. Several popular attractions are either inaccessible or difficult to reach by boat. A heavily used marina is closed due to the low water and no one can say when it will reopen. Millions of visitors still flock there every year, but attendance last year was well below pre-pandemic levels.
Many boaters and other recreationists want the lake kept at higher elevations to insure usage of the few boat ramps still open. But many scientists say that won't be feasible if river flows stay as low as they are or continue declining. A birdwatcher, she said she visits the lake to enjoy nature, even though it’s not completely natural, having been created in the 1960s by the damming of Glen Canyon on the Colorado River.
'Asking too much' of the riverMichael Winn, 45, an attorney from Torrey, Utah, who had parked his fishing boat at Bullfrog, has no ambivalence about his vision for Lake Powell's future. Winn spoke while standing on a walkway to the marina from the parking lot. It was Winn’s first trip to Powell in at least five years, although he had been coming to the lake off and on since growing up in the Salt Lake City area.
“You guys built those cities in the middle of the desert,” he said, referring to Lower Basin urban development. “I love you all, but seriously.” “But it’s completely gone," he said."There may be water back there, but you can’t get back there. The entrance to get there is dried up." He added that during dry periods in the Denver area, where he lives, many cities limit outdoor watering to two or three days a week.
But in 2020, the pandemic dropped visitation to about 2.5 million. A very poor monsoon season in 2020 and two years of low spring runoff pushed Powell down around 50 feet in a single year to a then-record low level of 3,555 feet in July 2021. It kept falling, bottoming at 3,523 in May 2022, then rising to almost 3,540 feet before starting another decline in mid-July.
Protecting Rainbow Bridge and the national monument in which it lies was a hot-button issue during the controversy over building the dam in the 1950s, with environmentalists fighting, ultimately unsuccessfully, to keep the lake’s waters from intruding past the Rainbow Bridge National Monument’s boundaries. Congress first approved, then rescinded legislation aimed at preventing that.
But the pandemic and the low water sent annual visitation tumbling to a little less than 3,600 and 3,300 in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Visitation was particularly hurt by the cancellation of scheduled tours to Rainbow Bridge by private operators. It has been deepened four times since it was first dug in the 1970s, but even with that it runs dry when Powell falls below 3,580 feet. That's been the case since January 2021.
For years, it had a fueling dock, minor boat repair services, a supply store and snack bar, a ranger station and restrooms. But the park service closed it in May 2021 after it was severely damaged by a windstorm.The main lake channel there is expected to narrow to 100 feet wide as the lake drops, and the Dangling Rope Marina complex is much wider than that, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Superintendent Billy Shott told local media outlet Lake Powell Life in fall 2021.
“But unless I haul gas up there, I can’t get back. I probably won’t do that. It can’t be done safely,” he said at the Wahweap Marina. “We talked to a guy on the way up here who said he burns 28 gallons an hour. This guy had six five-gallon jugs of fuel. You can’t put enough gas in the boat’s fuel system, and hauling gas is dangerous.”
The closures hit particularly hard in July 2021, when the National Park Service shuttered the main boat ramp at Wahweap Marina to houseboats after the lake plunged, leaving all ramps into the lake closed at least a few weeks. Because of the ramp closures, “last year I was down $230,000 in cancellations,” said Wilkes, owner of Skylite Boat Rentals, located in Big Water, Utah, about 12 miles north of the lake. “In the last eight years I never laid any of my staff off in winter. Last year, we shut down for the winter. We had to cancel insurance on everything. We couldn’t pay it."
One of Wilkes’ cancellations was by Dr. Randall Metsch, a San Diego dentist who was in the process of renting jet skis from Wilkes as part of a trip planned with several other families for the end of July 2021. “My roommate was showing us these cool areas, and all of a sudden we hit a sandbar. In places, the water was 30-40-50 feet deep. We made it, but it was hard getting it out of the water,” Metsch said.“It’s like being in the Grand Canyon on water. The water is beautiful. You are out isolated, away from civilization. You’re living off what you brought on your houseboat. You’re cooking, barbecuing and you have all the fun with ski boats and jet skis.
"To say my confidence has been shook based on the projections that we’ve gotten would be grossly underestimating my reaction," said Shott, who left that job over the summer of 2022 to take a higher-ranking post overseeing Park Service operations in eight states. By contrast, longtime Lake Powell fishing guide McNabb said that while his business is surviving, “The bottom line is if this weather pattern doesn’t change, we’re done.”
The Park Service has hired a contractor, Jacobs Government Solutions, to explore long-term, low-water solutions and options for “sustainable access,” including at four public launch ramps across the lake. “It’s not that big a deal to move the marina. A bigger deal is how we provide it with electricity and drinking water, and how we remove wastewater, the sewage; gasoline. We need to figure out what this will cost," Shott said.
“At what point do you tell everyone to get their houseboats off the water before they become beached?” Balken asked.
It will work with a contractor to design new ramps at Antelope Point, Halls Crossing, a now-closed ferry terminal lying directly across the lake from Bullfrog, and at Hite Marina at the lake’s north end. It’s also seeking federal funds to explore ways to provide fuel and other services to replace what was provided by Dangling Rope Marina, along with a long-term access method for Rainbow Bridge.
“In many ways, it’s even better right now because it looks different. There are places you can see that haven’t been seen since you could raft the river. And those are all documented,” Shott told the Lake Powell Chronicle a year ago. “There are some phenomenal beaches now that are opened up that weren’t open before. You have to be careful, but there are some great hikes now too because you can hike in these slot canyons.
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