BACK TO NATURE\Agency plans Grand Canyon flood.

Byline: Michelle Boorstein Associated Press 

After 33 years of wreaking havoc on the Grand Canyon, the government wants to make amends. So it's staging a flood.

The four 8-foot-wide water tubes at Glen Canyon Dam will be opened Tuesday, sending water rushing into the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon at a rate fast enough to fill Chicago's Sears Tower in 17 minutes.

The purpose is to restore the Grand Canyon beaches and wildlife that have vanished because of micromanagement of the flow of water through the dam.

Nothing will return the canyon to its pristine pre-dam days, and the effects of the weeklong flood may well be temporary. But when the experiment is over, scientists might get a better understanding of how much water to release, and at what time of day, to help protect the environment.

The flood is a departure for the government, which for most of the past three decades has manipulated the flow to suit the needs of power companies.

"This event is our first attempt to operate the dam for environmental purposes," said David Wegner, program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the government's dam-managing agency.

Three million people in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming rely on the dam for power. The dam also provides drinking water for about 15 million people in those states, along with California and Mexico.

Since the dam was built in 1963, the river's every fluctuation, its color, its temperature, its beaches and even the fish have been meticulously managed. As a result, the river has evolved into something nature never intended.

Originally a warm, muddy red river, the Colorado now runs cold and clear green, its sediment left behind the dam in Lake Powell. Cold water has turned the area below the dam into one of the nation's premiere fishing spots for rainbow trout, a breed exotic to the area. Cottonwood trees, also foreign, have popped up in the canyon.

Until the mid-1980s, water was released in a torrent in the morning as power customers flicked on their lights and was reduced to a trickle at night.

But environmentalists insisted that the canyon needs free-flowing water. No nutrient-rich sediment means no beaches and no plants for some endangered animals. River guides complained that the unnatural releases of water made their jobs dangerous and washed away favorite beaches and wildlife.

"It was crazy. You'd have this totally schizophrenic river," said Brad Dimock, who has led wooden boats through the Grand Canyon since 1971. "The boat would get beached, or the river would wash away the boat and the camp kitchen if you weren't careful."

For about 10 years now, the government has toyed with water levels, hoping to find the right mix to keep everyone happy. But the power companies claim the fluctuations during the past decade have cost them as much as $100 million. And some of those costs, they say, are passed on to ratepayers.

"All over the West we're seeing a move to reoperate dams for environmental purposes," said Joe Hunter, executive director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association. "An economist would argue that someone else is getting the benefits in terms of protecting the Grand Canyon . . . yet we're still paying the mortgage."

There has been only scattered opposition to the artificial flood, some from river guides who fear the loss of favorite beaches and some from people concerned about the fishing prospects.

Hunter's group thinks the flood will cost members $2 million to $5 million. But he and most of his colleagues welcome the experiment, saying it will end debate over how fluctuations affect the canyon.

Most Indian groups also support the artificial flood, hoping the sediment will cover artifacts and protect them from archeologists and souvenir hunters.

No evacuations or other precautions are planned inside the canyon, which is so wide that the flood will be practically unnoticeable to anyone but river guides.

More than 100 scientists from around the world will be on hand to study the effects. Whatever happens, the river won't look anything like the way it did when one-armed Maj. John Wesley Powell led the first expedition of whites through the canyon in 1869.

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Photo Tourists float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The Bureau of Reclamation will open floodgates to restore the river. Associated Press