Risks to the Glen Canyon Dam that the resulting flood would scour the bottom few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon, overtop Hoover Dam, and cause severe damage all along the lower Colorado River. In the event of a complete dam failure with Lake Powell at high pool, about of water would surge out of Lake Powell at an initial depth of over . Downstream communities and perhaps every dam along the river, excluding possibly Hoover Dam, as well as riverside lowlands, would be inundated or severely damaged. Located downstream from Glen Canyon Dam are Hoover Dam forming Lake Mead, Davis Dam forming Lake Mohave, Parker
Course of the Colorado River flows through the Parker Valley, much of which belongs to the Colorado River Indian Reservation, and then the Palo Verde Valley, where it is crossed by Interstate 10 near Blythe, California. The small Headgate Rock Dam removes water for irrigation in the Parker Valley and the Palo Verde Dam provides water to the Palo Verde Valley. The river then flows through a canyon in the Trigo Mountains, where the Cibola and Imperial National Wildlife Refuge encompass the wetland areas formed above Imperial Dam, which filled with silt shortly upon its completion in the 1930s. Most of the Colorado's remaining flow