Immitating Nature: The Grand Canyon Flood
In an effort to stem the degradation of the Grand Canyon ecosystem, the government has decided to try a little experiment — if you can call 1.3 billion gallons of water ‘little’. Nature created periodic floods in the canyon until man came along and built huge hydro-electric dams along the river course. Glen Canyon Dam, for example, has been blocking the natural floods since the early 1960s, and since then the sandbars along the river have gradually washed away without being replaced.
Today the government opened the spigots on that dam, releasing 300,000 gallons of water per minute, with a plan to leave the flow open for three days. They hope this will help restore the sandbars and other flood-dependent features of the environment. It will also help wash out the accumulating sediment from behind the dam, which in time would fill the reservoir if left unchecked. I suspect they must have started the paperwork in the 1970s to get such an unorthodox project approved.