At the beginning of 1963, the dam was high enough to begin impounding water; huge steel gates were closed over the right diversion tunnel on January 21, and Lake Powell began to rise. A minimal flow of was allowed through the dam, to prevent the Colorado River from drying up completely. On that day, David Brower confronted President John F. Kennedy in a last-ditch effort to delay Glen Canyon's inundation. Brower later said of that exchange: "On January 2, 1963, the last day on which the execution of one of the planet's greatest scenic antiquities could yet have been spared, the man who theoretically had the power to save the place did not. I was within a few feet of his desk in Washington that day and witnessed how the forces long at work had their way. So a steel gate dropped, choking off the flow of the canyon's carotid artery, and from that moment the canyon's life force ebbed quickly. A huge reservoir, absolutely not needed in this century, almost certainly not needed in the next, and conceivably never to be needed at all, began to fill."