The 1965 Reservoir Equalization and Channel Cleaning Floods

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Updates

Topping et al. 2003. Computation and analysis of the instantaneous-discharge record for the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, Arizona, May 8, 1921 through September 30, 2000: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1677, 118 p. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1677/pdf/pp1677.pdf

Page 47: Then, from April through June 1965, a series of artificial floods was released from the dam, with six of these floods having peak discharges greater than 50,000 ft3/s. Between these flood peaks, discharges were reduced to as little as 10,000 ft3/s. These 1965 floods were designed to raise the elevation of Lake Mead reservoir and to scour the reach immediately below Glen Canyon Dam in order to increase the efficiency of the power plant at the dam, and were referred to informally by Bureau of Reclamation engineers as "channel cleaning flows" (Grams and others, Utah State University, written commun., 2002). During these 3 months of high discharge, approximately 5.0 million tons of fine sediment (that is, sand and finer material) were scoured from Glen Canyon between the dam and Lees Ferry (computed on the basis of the USGS daily suspended-sediment data from the Lees Ferry gaging station; U.S. Geological Survey, accessed November 15, 2000), and approximately 17.6 million tons of fine sediment were scoured from the reach between the Lees Ferry and Grand Canyon gaging stations (Rubin and Topping, 2001). From July 1965 to June 6, 1980, the dam was operated in such a way as to fill Lake Powell reservoir gradually, to fulfill downstream water-delivery obligations, and to maximize the generation of hydroelectric power. As shown in this study, this "reservoir-filling period" was the period of the greatest daily fluctuations in discharge for power generation (fig. 28)….

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