Customer Reviews

Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West

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The apocalyptic book Dead Pool tells us that there is a 50% chance of Lake Powell and the whole Colorado River dam system ending up as a "dead pool" by 2017 to 2021, OR SOONER, due to global warming (p. 184). Dead pool is defined as a permanent condition when the water level behind a dam is too low to spill water or generate hydroelectric power.

Powell extols early Colorado River explorer and anti-urban founder of the U.S. Geological Survey, John Wesley Powell, which Lake Powell is named after. But author James Powell never tells us if he is related.
Powell is a master story teller and educator. His book will teach the average reader much about the water system in the Southwest. He starts his book with an apocalyptic story of near dam collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam due to too much water in 1983; and ends his book with the story of how civilization in the Southwestern U.S., like the Indians in Chaco Canyon in the 12th century, will end soon due to too little water due to global warming resulting in dead and over-silted dams.

For proof positive Powell has a graphic photo on the cover of his book showing the present-day bathtub ring on Lake Powell; way, way above the water line. How could he be wrong? Look at the picture. Run the numbers and look at the data as Powell has done.
But the gnawing question after reading Powell's apocalyptic book remains: is he right; and if so, how right?

One of the centerpieces of Powell's argument is a bar graph on page 164 which shows the 10-Year Average Annual Flow at the northerly point of the Colorado River dam system from 1896 to 2007 measured in acre feet (an acre foot of water is one foot high of water spread over an acre of land; able to support about two urban families for a year).

A cursory look at the graph doesn't support Powell's apocalyptic claims. The graph shows fourteen years when the water flow in the Colorado River exceeded 20 million acre feet; and fourteen years when it fell below ten million acre feet. The average was 13.6 million acre feet (MAF). Two other times (in 1934 and 1977) the water flow in the River has fallen as low, or lower, than it was in 2001 (about 12.5 MAF). In 1979 the flow dropped to a low of 6 MAF. In 1984 the flow reached an all-time recorded high just over 25 MAF. What makes Powell convinced this is any different now and that water flows won't rebound, FOREVER?

Powell is certain that global warming will defy the statistical Law of Regression or gravitation toward the mean average because he is convinced that global warming is permanent. This is the problem I have with both global warming advocates and denialists. There is data that can show global warming or no global warming, whichever you choose. Powell looks into the mirror pool and chooses data to prove permanent warming. But this isn't science because in science you try to refute or falsify your own hypothesis.
Another assertion of Powell's book is that dams result in less water because impounding water behind dams results in higher evaporation. But Powell ignores the obvious: dams bring new water to former dry places; namely cities and farms. Neither does Powell mention the benefits of dams and regional water hydraulic systems: such as eliminating disease by sanitation systems; or saving forests by reducing the burning of wood for fuel by providing water for people to move off farms to cities. Instead, Powell advocates a return to the vision of explorer John Wesley Powell to live self-sufficiently on a 160-acre tract of land (p. 44-45; 245).

Powell frames his dam drama in religious language. Powell's antagonists, pro-dam politicians and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, are not just flawed or bureaucratic, they are portrayed as evil. Like John Wesley Powell, James Lawrence Powell is fond of Mormon theological socialism and irrigation systems (p. 35). Wesley Powell was opposed to the "theology" of Floyd Dominy, who is portrayed as an archetypical evil commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (p. 136). The Colorado River Compact Commissioners were driven by a religious "Manifest Destiny." And anti-capitalist and anti-modernist Wesley Powell is quoted as saying he was "more interested in the home and the cradle than in the bank counter."
Dead Pool is bound to be cited as secular scripture in the anti-dam movement like the story of Noah and the Ark in the Book of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian Bible; only the story is that of a drought instead of a flood. And like Noah, for all we know, Powell could be right. But what is the order of magnitude of probability for his anti-dam apocalyptic to justify his radical prescriptions?

Powell is a certaintist. Like all fundamentalists, he is convinced he is right. I have come to learn to be skeptical of certaintists, whether religious or secular. Powell's book takes you on a long mule ride in time down the Colorado River and Lake Powell. But is the imminent demise of Lake Powell a mirror pool of his own making?

Buy the book. It is a great read no matter what your take on it.

It's been 20 years now since Marc Reisner wrote Cadillac Desert. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, Dead Pool is a must read. With all that has changed regarding western water issues since 1989, Dr. Powell does an excellent job of updating the topic and adding historical perspective to those go-go years of dam building by the Bureau of Reclamation during the 50's and 60s. While Reisner could not have imagined the effects of climate change on the overused waters of the Colorado River, Dead Pool also provides eye-opening documentation on how global warming may well be the straw that breaks the camel's back. With Lake Mead at historic lows and Lake Powell little more than half full, Dead Pool is mandatory reading for anyone concerned about the future of the West.

This is an important subject that deserves a better examination. The book gets off to an interesting start with an aborbing account of the 1983 flood and its effect on Glen Canyon dam. The middle section is an overly long recount of the dreary history of pork barrel water projects in the West.

The final section looks to the future with predictions of water shortages, mainly due to global warming. This where the book falls short, not necessarily
on the global warming subject, but on what happens next. And the author doesn't really address that. He only gives a sentence or two to the obvious outcome, and that is the cities buying out the farmers' water interest. With something like 70% of the water going to mostly low value farm crops, when shortages get severe the economic and political power of the cities will re-direct the water from crops to people. And an examination of practical water
conservation is also omitted. These are the untold stories that are missing.

If you read Cadillac Desert, and have a grasp of global warming, this book doesn't really offer much new. That said, this book is better for those with interest in the subject if you haven't read either one of these. It adequately covers most of the high points with a few minor added issues.

I've often thought of the tragedy of Marc Reisner dying fairly young. I have no doubt he would have written a third edition of Cadillac Desert, had he lived long enough to have the hard science on global warming issues that we're getting today.

Well, short of that, we have James Powell writing "Dead Pool," a worthy successor to both that and Donald Worster's "Rivers of Empire."

That said, Powell goes beyond those two books in some ways.

First, he not only has the global warming science that Reisner didn't, he works with this issue more than Worster.

He also addresses development issues and water-grubbing in the modern West a bit more directly than they did. And, he addresses the future of what a "dead pool" on either Lake Powell or Lake Mead will mean for city water, irrigation water, and hydropower in the Southwest.

While Powell doesn't tell Las Vegas or Phoenix they should prepare for Armageddon, he pretty much details that's what's facing Phoenix ... an increasingly polluted smog, with Colorado River run-off chemicals in addition to hydrocarbons, nighttime temperatures sometimes staying in triple digits, and no more cheap electricity.

Someone like Ed Abbey, or an Ed Abbey fan, would love this book.

This is good writing and good reading,too. Alas it seems that anyone who can read the tea leaves as well as the scientific evidence of the looming droughts must have some liberal, green, and social ax to grind. Once you realize this, a great story emerges from Powell.
Jack Flobeck Aqua Prima Center 'think tank' for water research.

I consider James Lawrence Powell's book to be a worthy successor to Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert. (See several posts on the book over at Waterwired.)

A "dead pool" of water behind a dam is too low for water to flow into the intakes that drive the turbines that generate electricity. A dead pool is an engineering nightmare; it means that the dam is not holding back enough water to generate power, let alone buffer highs (floods that threaten communities) or lows (droughts that limit irrigation).

JL Powell* follows in Reisner's tradition, also documenting the abuses of rivers and dams by bureaucrats and engineers who enjoy job security as they block one river after another. Powell's book differs in its examination of how deep the delusion runs (Reisner wrote when climate change was still emergent as a concern) as well as his fatalistic -- and well justified -- contemplation of a world where dams built for bad reasons are not just a waste of money, but a barrier to natural flows that would be dangerous even if the dams cost nothing.

The book has five parts:

1. River of Surprise -- the floods and droughts of the Colorado River
2. River of Empire -- the rise of big infrastructure, how the Bureau of Reclamation was a total failure before the Hail Mary play for the Hoover Dam that brought them back.**
3. River of Controversy -- Hoover succeeded, so that means we need more dams, right?
4. River of Limits -- The end of abundance means that many of these dams are failing to meet their performance targets, faster than ever.
5. River of Tomorrow -- we're in trouble since these dams are expensive to remove and dangerous to leave in place.

I picked up some interesting ideas and facts: The "Concrete Pyramid" (CP) composed of people from BurRec, USACE, politicians, construction companies and agribusiness cooperated to build dams that benefited the few at a cost to the many. (A dam version of the iron triangle for property development that I described here.)

Ironically -- but not surprisingly -- the CP thinks that climate change calls for MORE dams. (Sounds like the folks in favor of the $11 billion California bond.) Glen Canyon -- the largest dams in the US -- was part of a boondoggle. BurRec built it as a means of paying for more dams, elsewhere.

Here's how the Bureau's engineers got their extra dams: They calculated the benefit/cost ratio for ALL projects in a basin, not one-by-one. That allowed them to build many small dams that failed a benefit/cost calculation because they were grouped with "cash-register" dams with good ratios. Glen Canyon was one such dam, and its construction allowed BurRec to build more dams that made no economic sense. Within this general principle, there were several nuances:

* Besides dams that delivered more cost than benefits, BurRec also underestimated total cost, knowing that they could ask for more money later, since there was no penalty for cost overruns, and no project was killed when its costs escalated.
* Dams were built in the Colorado's Upper Basin to suit politicians (like Congressman Aspinall, one of many pork kings)

I started thinking "Bureau of Wreckage" when I was reading these chapters.

And it's not just in terms of the environmental devastation from big dams. Powell examines the notoriously controversial accounting for Colorado River flows. He discusses the long term average annual volume (14.6 maf past Lee's Ferry) and compares that supply -- plus 1.2 maf from other sources -- to the current demand: 4.5 maf from upper basin states, 7.5 maf from lower basin states, 1.5 maf to Mexico, and 2.4 maf of evaporation and other losses. As you can see 15.9 maf of demand exceeds 15.8 maf of supply, and that's why the reservoirs -- Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam -- are draining NOW.

Powell goes on to point out that Colorado River flows are averaging 60 percent of historic flows in the early 21st century, and that climate change will only make things worse -- a hotter earth will decease supply through higher evaporation and increase demand for water as soils dry out. Things are not looking good. (At this point, Powell makes his one big mistake -- he fails to mention the possibility of controlling, reducing or reconciling demand through some sort of market mechanism. That's not necessarily a mistake, if he thinks that bureaucrats will be in charge to the end, but they needn't be.)

In contrast to this dire future (based on scientific evidence and models), we have the lookin' good! future of the Bureau, a future that takes the 20th century's high flows as "normal" and assumes that the 21st century will look the same. In other words, BurRec sees a drop in supply as highly unlikely and reductions in demand as unnecessary. Powell says -- and I totally agree -- that BurRec is sleepwalking off a cliff of denial, inertia and ignorance.***

But who will suffer when supplies run short and never-before-tested rights on the Colorado River are invoked? What will happen when Lake Powell drops to a dead pool? Who will pay when a huge chunk of the water and electricity supplies to the southwest disappear? It won't be the Bureau of Wreckage. It will be us, and we will be screwed by the guys who built dams that failed benefit cost at that design stage, the guys who felt it was more important to deliver power to subsidized users than to conserve water in a drought, the guys who are telling us that everything's ok when it really isn't.

Just F**ing great, I tell you.

And Powell doesn't shy away from how bad it can get. His final chapter is a terrifying vision of unsustainable policies coming home to roost, a collision of delusions brought to ground by a reality as remorseless as gravity. The concrete pyramid is indeed built on sand.

Bottom Line: I give this book FIVE STARS as a fast read on an important topic, that takes from historic roots to future potentials. This book is a worthy companion to Cadillac Desert.
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* JL Powell will either confirm nor deny that he's related to JW Powell. I say that he isn't, since any bona fide relative would have said he was related long ago...
** Subject of another new book (via DW).
*** Unfortunately, BurRec and many others ignored the best advice ever given on water in the West, John Wesley Powell's 1879 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States.

The book is a well written and a very interesting view of the western water wars that hatched the Bureau of Reclamation. BuRec as we fondly call these bureauocrats were instrumental in providing free water to people who should have been able to pay for their own water supplies. The historical scenarios in the book are slanted toward making the protagonists seem like evil charlatans doing all they can to thwart the good intentions of the general public. It really didn't happen that way.

Global warming is touted in the book as the disaster that will damn the Colorado to be a stagnant series of uneffective ponds. No real data are provided to justify this conclusion. Looking at the chart of water levels included in the book, the author's conclusion that the river averages 13 million acre feet of water over historical measurements is false. The data show that the average over the period of measurement is that the flow is more likely 15 to 16 million acre feet of water per year. Even so, the allocation of river water to users in the lower basin is still negative over the long term.

What to do? Mr. Powell is seemingly just content to contemplate disaster. The real solution to the river allocation problem and the lower basin shortfall in the next few decades is to plan to provide a new supply. I would suggest that the Pacific Ocean is a ready source for alleviating the problems of a less than robust Colorado River flow. Desalination is a proven technology. Mr. Powell does not provide relief scenarios. He just complains. Global warming alarmists need to look toward mitigation.

Well written, and fully referenced. I will be using quotes out of it for some work I am writing and of course will provide the proper attributions.