Glen Canyon Dam A dam in Glen Canyon was studied as early as 1924, but these plans were initially dropped in favor of the Hoover Dam (completed in 1936) which was located in the Black Canyon. By the 1950s, due to rapid population growth in the seven U.S. and two Mexican states comprising the Colorado River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation deemed the construction of additional reservoirs necessary. However, the USBR faced opposition when it proposed the Echo Park Dam in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument, which the nascent environmental movement saw as a legal threat to the status of protected lands. After a
Risks to the Glen Canyon Dam annually at Glen Canyon, and as Lake Powell is the farthest large reservoir upstream on the Colorado River mainstem, the sediment load is completely trapped in the reservoir as the Colorado discharges into it. This sediment is creating a steadily advancing "toe" of sediment, i.e. an underwater alluvial fan, that is advancing towards the dam. It is estimated that the sediment will reach the dam base in a minimum as low as eighty to one hundred years or as far as 500 to 700 years, although it will take much more time for the sediment deposited there to reach higher