Capacity _kw._ 900,000
Number of units 8
Capacity of each _kw._ 112,500
generator.
Capacity of each turbine _hp._ 155,500
[Illustration: 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.
Glen Canyon Storage Unit will be the keystone in this whole structure.
The dam spans the river near its exit from the Upper Basin, as if in the
spout of a great funnel where it can control all of the water in the
funnel's cone--the Colorado's own flow and all that its tributaries feed
into it upstream from the dam. The powerplant will generate about 75
percent of the project's total power and the reservoir will contribute
about 75 percent of the water storage that the Congress authorized in
1956 as initial development for the Upper Basin. This reservoir or lake,
extending 186 miles behind the dam, will be flanked by remarkably
beautiful scenery. The Nation's gain in new public and private wealth
will be tremendous.
The Federal Government will finance the project, but the people who use
the water and power will repay about 99 percent of the cost--about
two-thirds with interest.