Is it Time to Think About Removing Dams on the Colorado River?

Abrahm Lustgarten, a reporter for ProPublica, has written a new story about one of the largest dams in the US, Glen Canyon, and a recent push to open up its gates. It’s a remarkable development, he says, given how important the Colorado River dams — Glen Canyon, with its reservoir, Lake Powell, and Hoover with Lake Meade — have been for the development of the West.

In the early 1900s, the US government started building dams up and down the Colorado River to harness its water and distribute it far outside the river’s natural course — hundreds of miles into Arizona and California.