In 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam was built. It created Lake Powell Reservoir, which straddles Utah and Arizona, to ensure a water supply for the lower Colorado River basin states and Mexico. Over the past six decades, it has also become a recreation destination for millions. The dam has experienced its fair share of unexpected trauma, threatening river flow levels, depleting water storage and exposing sediment. Sediment is the walled molded mud that contains the Colorado River. It’s always been there, but historic droughts like those in 2002 and 2020 have caused the lifeline of the West to drop to alarming levels, exposing the mud. Before the water is potable, it’s brown and murky. … Why should we care? Because the mud is being trapped above the dam, depriving the river below, and suffocating it above.

Other Colorado River articles:

• Deseret News: The fight to save the Colorado River
• Newsweek: Lake Powell faces sediment crisis: ‘30,000 dump truck loads’ per day 
• The Denver Post: Opinion: The day the Animas River ran orange with pollution may have been the start of something beautiful
• Nature Reviews Earth & Environment: Study: Individual return patterns of spawning flannelmouth sucker to a desert river tributary