Colorado Water
Here's an article about last weekend's Grand Canyon flood from the Rocky Mountain News [November 25, 2004, "Flooding experiment brings visible changes to canyon"]. From the article, "The goal of the flood was to redistribute 800,000 metric tons of sediment along the Colorado River to cover archaeological sites, restore beaches and save fish and plants that have been disappearing since sediment-free water began flowing from the dam 40 years ago. The Interior Department began studying the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam in the early 1980s and found that beaches downstream from the dam were washing away. In 1996, officials flooded the canyon by releasing water for 18 days. But only about five of those days produced high floods. Scientists overestimated the sediment levels in the beds of the tributary rivers that pour into the river below the dam, and sediment that was redeposited by some of the flooding was soon eroded away by slower, more steady flood waters. The new flood was considered a refinement of the 1996 test."
Rocky Mountain News: "A spending bill awaiting congressional approval includes funding for a cost overrun on the federal Animas-La Plata water project in Colorado and New Mexico. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., added language to the bill that will also prevent the increased cost from being passed on to water users. The estimated cost of the project is now $500 million."
5:47:14 AM 
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