Fifty years of Blue Mesa

From unwanted intrusion to big business

At a glance, Blue Mesa Reservoir looks so natural you might not know it isn’t. For the past 50 years, it’s become a cornerstone of the local community through the summer months, contributing more than $40 million annually to the local economy and recreational opportunities to people, not to mention an abundance of water in an arid landscape.

But the reservoir hasn’t always been popular with the people who would be most affected by it.
When it was first conceived of in the years following World War II and legislated in the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act, the reservoir was part of a broad plan to capture the arid west’s seasonal flow to feed the growing need for reliable sources of water.
The Colorado River Storage Project Act (CRSP) commissioned, among others, four mega-reservoirs—at Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, Glen Canyon on the Arizona/Utah border, Navajo on the San Juan in New Mexico and Curecanti, west of Gunnison—to hold as much as 30 million acre-feet of water, or about twice the annual flow of the Colorado River, for future use.
All of the planned reservoirs were in unpopulated areas, where there was little resistance to the proposals, except in Gunnison.
Long-time local writer and historian George Sibley told the story of those early days to a near-capacity Alpine Express bus tour heading toward the dam on Monday, June 4.
As the group moved out of town and into the hay meadow west of Gunnison, Sibley said, “If the Bureau of Reclamation had gotten what it wanted in the 40s, we’d be entering Blue Mesa shortly now.” Looking around, it was clear the consequences would have been devastating. People knew the land would be stripped below the water line, leaving a barren expanse exposed when the water was drawn down. Prevailing westerly winds would have pushed the parched earth across the surrounding ranches and town.
“They knew it would turn Gunnison into a dust cloud,” Sibley commented. Opponents fought the most expansive plans, with the help of Dan Thornton, a local rancher who was then governor, and won.
In its compromise plan, the Bureau of Reclamation reduced the maximum size of the reservoir by more than 500,000 acre-feet, to the size it is today.
Still nearly 1 million acre-feet, Blue Mesa Reservoir is the state’s largest body of water being held in by what amounts to a rock wall. And while capturing water was one goal, power generation was another. After the citizens’ protest, the idea of one huge dam was replaced by a plan for three, equipped with turbines that today generate enough stable electricity to power about 8,000 homes from the Blue Mesa facility alone.
But as with many proposed dam projects, many people lost out on the deal. There were old railroad towns at Iola and Sapinero, with what Sibley described as “thriving little resort communities” that cashed in on travelers and the annual emergence of the giant willowfly that brought anglers to the area. All that slid below the waves, along with the sheer canyon walls and verdant floodplains.
At one point Sibley turned toward an upcoming bridge that crosses the reservoir, commenting that the bridge is taller than it is long, although it didn’t seem so. While the road is only a short distance from the surface of the water, the bridge is some 300 feet above the canyon floor.
And while it might seem massive, Blue Mesa alone wasn’t big enough for the Bureau of Reclamation’s grand vision. The two other, smaller, reservoirs are tucked in the canyon below, each with an important role to fill in the system.
As the tour bus turned off the highway at Pine Creek and started down a precarious incline, Gunnison River Water Conservancy District manager Frank Kugel let out a thanks to the brakes on the bus, which suddenly gripped hard, jolting everyone forward.
Eventually the bus covered the 390-foot depth of the dam. The pull of gravity on the bus was enough to appreciate the power harnessed by an earthen mound holding back a million acre-feet of water. At the bottom of the canyon, all that power was put into terms everyone understood: water, gravity and electricity.
Together, the three maintain a delicate balance to produce all that comes from the Aspinall unit today. While Blue Mesa Reservoir is the biggest of the three reservoirs, offering recreational opportunities, Morrow Point Reservoir directly below Blue Mesa generates the most power, by a lot. Although it holds back only 179,000 acre feet of water, or a fifth as much as Blue Mesa, Morrow Point dam can generate 192 megawatts of power, compared to 82 mW at Blue Mesa dam and just 31 mW at Crystal dam, the last dam in the unit.
By keeping water at the top, power generation in the middle and a consistent flow of water from Crystal Reservoir into the river below, the Bureau of Reclamation has been able to give the public power, water, recreational amenities and a source of income while maintaining some semblance of an ecosystem in the Black Canyon, below the chain of reservoirs. Only a few years ago did the managing federal agencies settle on a way to return a simulation of the spring runoff to the Black Canyon, allowing for an important annual cleaning.
But environmental concerns weren’t always a priority for the federal government. Facility manager Ted Dunn points out the nation’s system of dams “is the part of the federal government that actually makes money.” Not only does the resulting reservoir pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy; the power generated at the dams raised $26 million in revenue last year. And power production needs to be consistent and reliable, he said, to be marketable.
But for its utility, hydropower is incredible stuff. Without it, Dunn explained, a region-wide power system blackout would be hard to come back from, since nuclear and fossil fuel-powered generators need power to start generating. Water only needs someone to turn on the spigot to fall through a turbine.
From outside, the dam’s scale was impressive, spanning nearly 800 feet from side to side and 300 feet thick at the base, tapering up to just 20 feet. All the material used in its construction, from the clay to big chunks of riprap on the surface, was sourced in the area. The design is antiquated, with only one intake, or penstock, for the generators, but passes annual inspections with flying colors.
Although Blue Mesa dam is earthen, the other two dams in the system are concrete and the Morrow Point dam was the first dam built by the Bureau of Reclamation with a lens-like curvature across the horizontal and vertical surfaces. It’s a technical marvel, held against the canyon walls with the force of a reservoir behind it.
And the technology inside is equally impressive, although antiquated in its own way. By Thanksgiving of 1965, the diversion tunnel at Blue Mesa was closed and by 1968, the reservoir was full. As it looks today, not much has changed since then.
But the importance of the reservoir is growing all of the time, proven the day before the tour. Sunday, June 3 was officially the peak storage at Blue Mesa for the year and it was 36 feet below full. Less water means less electricity and obviously less storage for a year such as this.
Fifty years is a reason to celebrate the dam, but a dry year might be a better reason to celebrate the reservoir. As Kugel pointed out after remarking on the large size of Monday’s tour group, “It’s amazing how a dry year can generate an interest in water.”