To the south of Canyonlands and Arches, east of Capitol Reef, and north of the Grand Canyon is a place some have called “America’s lost National Park.” It’s dominated by magnificent sandstone arches and natural bridges, cathedral-like grottos, winding slot canyons, picturesque waterfalls, and hundreds of unexplored Native American cultural sites.
It’s called Glen Canyon — and many Americans have never heard of it. Because, in 1963, it was submerged under hundreds of feet of water to create Lake Powell Reservoir. Glen Canyon Dam sits at the headwaters of the Grand Canyon, holding back the reservoir, generating power for millions of Americans, and, most importantly, allocating water to Arizona, Nevada, and California.
However, Lake Powell’s water levels are becoming dangerously low. Since 2006, its capacity has been below 30% and continues to decline. Entire marinas are being closed or relocated because they’re unusable. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) recently forecasted that the reservoir could reach “Minimum Power Pool” — the point at which the dam can no longer produce hydroelectric power — this year.
A critical juncture is rapidly approaching, according to Erik Balkan, who runs the nonprofit Glen Canyon Institute (GCI).
“I think what most people don’t understand is that Lake Powell is going away whether we want it to or not,” Balkan told GearJunkie. Hitting Minimum Power Pool is one thing. But if the water level continues to drop to the point known as “Dead Pool,” water will no longer pass through the dam, and the Colorado River will stop flowing through the Grand Canyon.
At that point, Balkan said a water crisis, unlike anything the U.S. has ever experienced, would ensue.
GearJunkie reached out to the USBR to discuss the situation and its implications for Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam. However, the agency declined to grant an interview. It offered the following statement instead.
“The Department of the Interior and Reclamation are committed to addressing hydrologic challenges, including prolonged drought, in the Colorado River Basin by utilizing science-based, innovative strategies and working cooperatively with all partners that rely on the Colorado River.”
Balkan and GCI see the looming problems at Lake Powell as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is America’s chance to get Glen Canyon back, restore the Colorado River to a free-flowing state, and protect all that this beautiful place has to offer. GCI recommends a “Fill Mead First” strategy. It would drain Lake Powell and instead store that reservoir’s water downstream in Lake Mead, which has enough capacity to accept it.
It would be the largest river restoration project in human history, if successful. But that vision has an incredible uphill battle ahead of it.
Going Down Glen Canyon, Coming Up Dry
GearJunkie accompanied Balkan and GCI on a trip deep into Glen Canyon in the fall of 2025. We camped in areas that were completely underwater just 2 years prior. We hiked far into canyons whose flora and fauna were exploding back to life at the first opportunity. As water levels decline, these reemerging pieces of Glen Canyon are returning to their natural states without any intervention.
The deeper you go, the lusher they become.
“It’s like you’re going back in time,” Balkan noted as we followed a trickling creek swimming with frogs, among head-high cheatgrass and native cottonwood saplings. There were signs of big horn sheep, deer, and beaver everywhere. Here and there, ancient evidence of Native American presence was etched into the rock walls.
“Glen Canyon is viewed by water managers as a water tank, and it’s so much more than that,” Balkan said.
GCI has been working to show the world that since 1996. The nonprofit organization advocates through scientific research, facilitating surveys like the one I joined and funding peer-reviewed studies. Balkan has been with GCI since 2006, and today he is its executive director.
His passion for Glen Canyon is contagious as he names plants and insects, points out rock formations, and recounts stories of the area’s history. His hatred for Lake Powell is palpable, too, when you watch him grimace at the algae-blossoms and trash floating around, muttering about the lake’s “fetid waters.”
As a lifelong outdoor recreator (and fan of Edward Abby), I understand Balkan’s zeal for this cause. The reemerging pieces of Glen Canyon that he showed me — Cathedral in the Desert, Gregory Natural Bridge, and the canyons we explored — were some of the most spectacular sights and canyon scenes I’ve encountered. If Glen Canyon were a place you could backpack or raft camp in, it would probably be one of Utah’s most popular.
As a journalist, though, I also see that GCI’s fight is a David-versus-Goliath situation. Glen Canyon Dam isn’t just a source of hydroelectric power for 5–5.8 million Americans across Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska. It is also a lynchpin in the West’s incredibly complicated and contentious Water Wars.
The West’s Great Big Water Problem
When Glen Canyon Dam was built, the U.S. was experiencing a water surplus. It was at the height of an era when the federal government was building hundreds of dams across the nation, and quickly.
When it’s full, which it hasn’t been since the ’90s, Lake Powell can hold 25 million acre-feet (or ~8.1 trillion gallons) of water. That water is collected in the Upper Basin and then delivered from Lake Powell to Arizona, Nevada, and California, where it’s stored in Lake Mead. Those three “Lower Basin” states rely entirely on the water released from Glen Canyon Dam.
That is the dam’s most important function. It delivers the legally required amount of water collected in the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin. It’s essentially a control valve used to ensure that the Lower Basin can’t use more water than its entitled to per the 1922 Colorado River Compact — entitlements based on overestimated river flows from that era.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, you can already see that Glen Canyon Dam is a Gordian Knot of Western water law. Removing or bypassing it to restore the Colorado River and return Glen Canyon to its natural splendor would change everything about how the West manages water.
However, Balkan argues that before long, we won’t have a choice in the matter. As of March 2026, Lake Powell’s water level is sitting at 3,530 feet above sea level. That’s within 50 feet of Minimum Power Pool (elevation 3,490 feet). At that level, the already-damaged river outlet works pipes would be the only mechanism to deliver water downstream.
If water levels drop to 3,370 feet, that’s elevation Dead Pool — Code Red for the West. Some 40 million people downstream would be without water in one of the hottest and driest regions of North America. Farms would dessicate, devastating food supplies, businesses, and communities. Power would go out. Data centers would crash. The fallout would be irreparable.
Jack Schmidt, the director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, told GearJunkie he sees a 0% chance of that happening this summer.
“Reclamation is on record in numerous regulatory documents and in public statements that, come hell or high water, they are going to do everything they can to keep Powell from going below 3,500,” he said.
This May, USBR will reportedly begin drawing additional water from the much smaller Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream to keep Lake Powell’s water levels above 3,500 feet. In December 2025, USBR also adjusted Powell’s monthly releases to retain more water. If it has to, though, Schmidt said USBR would likely even go so far as to break the 1922 Colorado River Compact to avoid a catastrophic scenario.
Still, given the Colorado River Basin’s snowpack is at a historically low level this year, Balkan says a crash of some kind at Lake Powell seems imminent — whether it’s next year, or 10 years from now.
“There’s just not enough water in the system to keep the reservoir even at a functional level,” he said. “And so we have to start having a conversation about what’s next.”
The ‘New Law of the River’: Post-2026 EIS
2026 is an important year for conversations about Lake Powell and Glen Canyon. This year, the Basin States and USBR are negotiating and establishing new guidelines governing the release of water from Glen Canyon Dam. The 2007 Interim Guidelines expire at the end of 2026, and the new rules will manage the river through 2060.
In January 2026, USBR released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). It outlines five alternative management strategies, each establishing different criteria for what counts as a “water shortage,” the basis for those criteria, and proposals for where and how water could be stored moving forward.
You can read detailed descriptions of each alternative plan in Chapter 2 of the EIS.
All of the alternative plans propose protecting Lake Powell’s water levels by supplementing them with water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir. To both Balkan and Schmidt, that seems like a short-term solution. Schmidt said that’s a card you can only play so many times. Balkan agreed, pointing out that none of the proposed plans ensures the system won’t fully crash.
Alternative Long-Term Solutions
According to climate scientists, Lake Powell is unlikely to ever reach full capacity again. As climate change intensifies, the amount of water in the Colorado River Basin is measurably diminishing. In fact, there’s a word for it: aridification.
In an interview with Colorado State University (CSU) Magazine, the school’s Senior Water Scientist, Bradley Udall, described the rate at which the water is vanishing.
“We think we lose somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of the flow of the Colorado River through enhanced evaporation for each degree Celsius of warming, or nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said. Since the 1970s, temperatures in the Upper Basin have risen by roughly 3 degrees Fahrenheit, suggesting a loss of 5–15% of the basin’s water. That trend will continue, Udall warned.
Facing that reality, the USBR needs to consider long-term alternative solutions. Glen Canyon Dam was not built to operate at low water levels. Reengineering the dam to do that would require lowering the hydroelectric penstocks. It would be an immense and potentially cost-prohibitive project.
It has been done before, though. Between 2011 and 2016, engineers lowered the Minimum Power Pool on the Hoover Dam from 1,050 feet to 950 feet. So it’s not impossible. And in fact, the USBR is allegedly already looking into operational and physical dam modifications in a totally separate process from the post-2026 EIS.
Schmidt said, in his mind, the most achievable long-term solution is to reduce water consumption, particularly in the Upper Basin, where 55% of the water used goes to growing livestock feed like alfalfa. If all the Basin States can reduce their overconsumptive practices, it would relieve significant pressure on the system.
Of course, if you ask Balkan for the GCI perspective, he’ll tell you it’s time to get America’s lost national park back. It’s time to return the Colorado River to a free-flowing state, and rectify what he called a “crime against nature.” Reroute the river around or through the dam, leave the dam as an emergency facility, and fill Lake Mead first, instead of Lake Powell, Balkan suggests.
Lake Mead’s water has likewise been declining since 2000, and it now has the capacity to accept all of Lake Powell’s. GCI advocates allowing the Colorado River to flow freely into Mead, unobstructed by Glen Canyon Dam, effectively draining Lake Powell.
“We made this huge environmental sacrifice of drowning Glen Canyon, but it was always deemed as necessary to make the system work,” Balkan said. “But now we don’t need it to make the system work because the system doesn’t work. There isn’t enough water. We don’t need that storage anymore. And so it’s time to start thinking about a post-Lake Powell future.”
Glen Canyon Dam has gone from being a resource to a liability, he said, and these impending problems present an opportunity for redemption on a grand scale.
