Powell Water Level So Low That Remnants Of Concrete Plant Last Seen In 1966 Emerging From Reservoir

[hatrack]

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A photo of a old concrete plant foundation visible above Lake Powell on Tuesday. Bureau of Reclamation officials say the plant produced the concrete used to build Glen Canyon Dam and had been underwater for over 50 years.

The declining water levels at Lake Powell, caused by the West's ongoing drought, have unearthed another piece of history that had been submerged for over five decades. Foundations of an old concrete plant used in the 1960s to help complete the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam — located just south of the Utah-Arizona border — started to reappear in recent weeks, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. Lake Powell was just 3 years old when the foundations were last visible. "These foundations we are seeing today have not been above water since 1966," the agency wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday.

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Between then and June 1960, crews set up a concrete plant that would pour the concrete to construct the massive dam. This is the piece of history now visible near the dam today. "The area was used to haul freshly mixed concrete from the plant to the dam using a system of cable and industrial-size buckets, allowing workers to position and place the concrete on the site," bureau officials wrote Tuesday.

The first bucket of concrete was poured on June 17, 1960. It went into a 137-foot excavated area that would become the dam's foundation. The concrete plant remained an important piece of the dam construction over the next three years, up until the completion of the dam on Sept. 13, 1963.

The reservoir began to fill shortly after. It would take 17 years for it to fill up to an elevation of 3,700 feet above sea level. Along the way, it submerged the concrete plant foundations, estimated at 3,525 feet, in 1966, per the federal agency. But Utah's ongoing drought — especially, the megadrought that researchers say is the worst the region has experienced in 1,200 years — has depleted Lake Powell's levels. The Bureau of Reclamation reports Lake Powell is now about 25% full and just shy of 395 feet deep at the dam.

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https://www.ksl.com/article/50360746/remnants-of-old-concrete-plant-resurface-as-lake-powell-water-levels-keep-dropping

[CrispyQ]

1. Wow. 17 years to fill the reservoir!

I've never read that stat before.

[thatdemguy]

2. I once read a study of rainfall in that area

It said they made a mistake, the time frame they looked at for water flow down the river was an extremely wet time. Kind of like trying to base the normal flow down the Mississippi off of a flood, its just wrong data.

I know its a point of view, but saying its the worse drought in 1200 years, kind of makes me think, no it maybe normal, and they are wrong on what normal is. They may think normal is X amount of rain, and it maybe X-25%.