Why Not Flood the Grand Canyon?

Did you know that the U.S. once considered flooding the Grand Canyon to create yet another dam on the Colorado River? I didn't.

David Zipper, Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative writing in Slate, gives this as an example of the out of control dam-building that happened in the 20th century, and how it was turned back. We need to take it as a case study for what can be done for the juggernaut of U.S. highway building, he says.

Just a few quotes, one about the current state of the problem:

At the federal level, even asking questions about the collective climate impact of highway building appears verboten. In 2022 Stephanie Pollack, the acting head of the Federal Highway Administration, called on state DOTs to measure the carbon emissions attributable to their highway systems. Republicans were incensed; 21 states filed a suit, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell advised governors to simply ignore her.

One about part of the solution:

The U.S. Department of Transportation could ... hold states accountable for the accuracy of their congestion-relief predictions for past highway projects, refusing to fund further expansions sought by state DOTs that habitually overpromise. Federal funding matches for new highways, currently 90 percent for interstates and 80 percent for federal-aid highways, could be reduced, with states invited to collect tolls, including congestion pricing...

And one looking back at the dam example:

Thirty years ago, Beard confronted a comparable inflection point for dam building when President Bill Clinton appointed him to lead the Bureau of Reclamation. At the time, Beard was convinced that the agency’s raison d’être had to change. “I went around and met with all the bureau’s regional offices,” he said. “I walked into the room and said, ‘The dam-building era is over. Our job is to solve water problems, not to build monuments.’ ”

Rather than being a tool for mobility, [highways have] become a monument to an auto-centric lifestyle that fouls the air and depletes the public coffers. Neither the country nor the planet can afford to keep expanding it.

Great article!

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Photo by Tobias Alt from the Wikimedia Commons.