TROUBLE ON THE COLORADO! Damaged Pipes FOUND Inside Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
- Learn more about the 1983 Flood & Spillway Cavitation in our video "Behind the Drought 2: Lake Powell": • BEHIND THE DROUGHT Par...
Welcome back Colorado River Watchers! A startling new report from the the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation discovered pipe damage inside the Glen Canyon Dam. The ability of the dam to release water downstream from Lake Powell to 30 million people relying on it in Arizona, Nevada, California and beyond has the potential to be severely affected. We'll learn about what these problems are and the possible solutions being considered.
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Watch more lake and river episodes:
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*Learn more about the 1983 spillway cavitation* in our video *BEHIND THE DROUGHT 2* ▶ czcams.com/video/J19iRm1xGEY/video.html
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*Watch related episodes:*
Making it RAIN: Cloud Seeding the Desert: czcams.com/video/VsxTQy72XJk/video.html
[Colorado River Watch #02] Wall Street Eyes BILLIONS in River Rights: czcams.com/video/OLJS9gMsBiQ/video.html
Lake Mead UPDATE April 2024: czcams.com/video/B92MHwkuoXc/video.html
[Colorado River Watch #01] California ALFAFA Farms: czcams.com/video/OLJS9gMsBiQ/video.html
Honestly given what we know now they should completely do away with Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell and just let the river run into Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Would be much easier to manage honestly from just about every angle. What little power it generated compared to Hoover could be replaced and exceeded with renewables over the course of a decade or two while being supplemented by the rise in Mead's level in the interm. All the while Glen Canyon can be taken down slowly until it's no more and the river is returned to it's former self. Costly, for sure, however it beats all the alternatives in the long run I'd wager.
That should definitely be the plan during drought years at minimum! Just let the river flow above Mead. Unfortunately as we see there is a bunch of problems that need fixed first and the USBR still wants a plan to offset the hydropower. It seems like solar would be an obvious choice in that area, as the Glen Canyon Dam doesn't produce much power in the grand scheme of things. I think rooftop solar around Page could offset most of their needs seeing how it is a small town. Once the old issues are solved only then can we move forward. It seems like on the river it's always "1 step forward, 2 steps back".
@@mojo.adventures 100%
Kicking the can down the road is how we operate in America today.
slowly becoming a third world country, but sure lets keep on taking in more people
Unfortunately we don't do infrastructure anymore.
Totally unacceptable
I believe the engineering term is run to failure.
.....you say that like that hasn't been the American way for 100 years. We've got a nuclear dome leaking into the ocean from the 60s that they were well aware would be a problem lol, shit most of the dams we rely on today were built were built in the first half of the 1900
the best solution is NOT to build a metropolis in the middle of a desert.
Well. I want to live there and have a lawn that I need to water all day. Will need to plant some trees, too. The desert just isn’t like my home back east.
Wait… we ran out of water? How the hell am I supposed to water my plants.
What do you think would happen if everyone in this country were to move to a place where you can drill a well to get water? All the aquifers would dry up. Even NYC depends on dams for its water. Try being realistic and not judgemental about how humans get and use water. The issue of us using too much water applies to every place in the US where humans live. Going on about why people live in the desert and not overcrowding your community has nothing to do with the issue at dams, which are needed all over the country, not just in the desert. I'll bet there are dams near you that you only think of as the lakes that they form. The video indicates the issue is being solved with a bypass tunnel, so there is no need to worry. This video was informative, not an open door for people with very little knowledge of how things work to criticize others.
The solution isn't to not build metropolises in the desert, that's actually probably the best place to build them, the land has little use otherwise.
The solution is to stop trying to fucking farm in the desert, that's where all the water goes and why the Colorado doesn't reach the sea anymore.
@@johnt1877 Happening in many counties in Texas with the massive influx of people from other places.
That horse has left the gate.
I have personally been inside 2 of the turbine outlet pipes at Carter's damn... They're massive in diameter 14 feet wide. While I was building scaffolding for the engineers to be able to put in new water flow and cavitation sensors in the pipes. They opened one of the 4 outlet pipes. We're 120 feet down in this damn and when they open that flow valve. You can feel the pip you're in vibrating while you hear nothing but the whoosh of water in the other outlet... Pretty scary Because it sounds like the water is coming thru the pipe you're in...
Holy moly... what an experience🤯 I think the closet I've come to something like that is being down in a slot canyon during an incoming freak storm. You can hear the water and feel it... you just don't know when or where it's coming! First time I've heard of cavitation sensors also, something new to look into. Thank you for watching and commenting!
scary
@@mojo.adventures I remember it all like yesterday... It was 2009 I took a job as a scaffold builder for Georgia power and its other cousins like duke energy and the army corp of engineers... (Nobody was having their trees cut, people just couldn't afford it) needless to say, taking that job opened my eyes to the world of engineering... I've been to places most people could only imagine inside powerplants. From inside of the actual boilers of coal fired plants like plant bowen to inside hydroelectric dams, I even worked for the TVA (Tennessee valley authority). If people only knew what it took to produce electricity on this scale to actually see behind the curtain like I have. From turbine floors you could eat off of they're so polished and pristine... To the belly of the beast where it all happens in the shadows. It's dirty, dark and miles of it like a labyrinth.
😳
That’s a poor practice to open spillways while workers are in different spillways!
Sounds like a Golden opportunity was missed in 2022 to make Overdue repairs and Necessary Upgrades …..
I thought the same thing, seems like the best time for repairs would be when water level is at an all time low.
Restricting the use of water for golf courses would save billions of gallons of water. While residents and businesses are told to reduce usage to a gallons per address golf courses raise the gallons per person into the thousands.
The majority of the water on the Colorado River goes to agriculture.
Aloha hugs 🤗 we use sewer treated Water for golf course mail.near Bases and In Utah the hose outside is for yards in the house for human 65years ago
@@kathypaaaina3953 We stated with reclaimed water in Florida in the mid 1970's in certain neighborhoods, separate meter for that. The my mother would not allow the azaleas to be watered with the reclaimed source as it killed the shrubs. On the St. Augustine lawn, it thrived with the reclaimed water.
Exactly. But golfers (ahem) ‘well-off and wealthy golfers in Scottsdale need their green golf courses.
every simple minded fool loves to blame golf courses because going after agriculture in places it shouldn't exist is apparently too big brained
Thanks for this video!
Shortsightedness combined with huge projects can result in massive problems, as you describe.
Absolutely! It's a bit of a testament to the Hoover Dam's construction also. You wouldn't think something of this size and engineering precision from as recent as the 60s would have so many failures already...
Hindsight is not Shortsightedness. You probably predicted that airplanes would take out the WTC too right?
@@akshonclip Nope. It was a controlled demolition.
@@tzadik36 I rest my case
Much easier. How about misused taxes and neglect because spending tax money on infrastructure is NOT what America does.
Excellently presented and very informative! Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping in to leave feedback 👍
All dams should have a sediment flush system. Hoover is one of them
The water slows where the river enters the lake, dropping most of the sediment there, not near the dam! If you watch videos of the Condit dam removal, you see the most sediment furthest from the dam. They had to drain the entire lake to flush it...good luck draining Powell or Mead to move all the sediment.
Sorry to say but They Don’t Teach or have Common Sense. The Main Problem was Al Gore John Kerry
@@DillonPrecisionFan A long time ago they had to pull the plug on the drain of the Gulf of Mexico in order to remove the sediment from the Mississippi…..
The sediment flush is not for sediment in the reservoir. It is for sediment in the Grand Canyon. You might notice in the video that the water comes out clear (white due to high air entrainment), not the color of sediment. The flush is intended to simulate floods, which are no longer a regular occurrence in the Canyon. These floods move sediment and form beaches, which are very convenient for people rafting in the Canyon who need a place to camp. These flushing flows, which caused the damage to the outlets, resulted from lobbying efforts by the rafting industry, among others. They were not part of the original planned operations and were starter during the Clinton administration, well after the dam was constructed.
@@DillonPrecisionFan because dredges dont exist?
Your videos are so informative. I have quite a few to catch up on. ❤
the flaw was thinking that the dam can last so long, like everything else, there is a lifetime, sometimes shorter than expected.
Nice informative video. They have to solve the water usage for the Colorado River.
Excellent briefing!
Subscribed. Jb.
Welcome aboard! Checking out your channel this morning... good stuff. Back at ya! 🤠
Amazing how I find you on the same channels I subscribe to, Juan! Including yours, of course! 🙂✈
Yikes! Thanks, love your channel.
Thanks for watching! Appreciate the feedback and glad to hear you're enjoying the content👍
If backpressure is what prevents the penstocks from cavitation damage. Then those 4 river outlets should have restrictor on the openings to create backpressure. Rather than flowing full blast, have a reduced volume flow and sustained backpressure. The outlets could have variable outlets to fine tune flow. And best of all it would only require construction on the 4 river outlets.
I still wonder why Glen canyon has so much trouble now and in 83 when A much older Hoover dam took the spillways flow in stride. I was at Hoover in 83 and it was Breathtakeing. The depth, the trembling roar of the spillways. I had no idea that volume was so temporary.
The backpressure would lessen or eliminate the cavitation, but it would not provide the high flow that was, I believe, the point of the experiment. None the less, this clearly seems to be the right approach.
Great ideas there! I will have to do some more digging and see if the USBR posts more detailed information on what the exact causes are this time. I could definitely see backpressure playing a part. When the spillways were damaged in '83 the main culprit was the high pitch at the top of the tunnels. I'm with you there also wondering how a newer dam has so much more trouble than an older (and bigger) one. Even if the cavitation issue is fixed again in the river works outlet, it still doesn't solve the problem of sedimentation or address the need for a low level bypass during drought periods. Wish I could have seen Hoover spilling back then. I hold out hope that maybe once more in the future before I'm done here I'll get to experience that!
From the video it looks like the river works are built using cement. I was wondering why those outlets do not have a metal-based inner lining that will (presumably) decrease cavitation, since metal is smoother than cement. My guess is that issue is the extra cost, but is there any other reason why metal is not used?
Hoover dam spillway also has had cavitation damage too, and now also has an air slot to prevent further damage. There was a lot of new technology that went into building Hoover, but because it was the first of its kind, there were many unknowns. The effects of cavitation were not well understood anywhere in the world, even at the time Glen Canyon was being built. When you push technology to its known limits, you learn things you never knew. However, both dams are still very safe. In the grand scheme, cavitation damage at these dams is a challenge that can be fixed. The dams were never in any danger of falling, regardless of the drama portrayed in the press.
Hoover did experience cavitation in 1941, the only other year that it overflowed, historically. This is from a narrative of Glen Canyon's near failure in 1983:
Constructing the spillways in this way, where hundreds of linear feet of each 41-foot diameter diversion tunnel are repurposed, was both quicker and cheaper to construct. The tradeoff, however, was that the bend where the spillway tunnel meets the diversion tunnel created the potential for cavitation. This danger was known by Reclamation, with both Hoover Dam and Yellowtail Dam experiencing damage from cavitation in their similarly configured spillway tunnels (Hoover in 1941 and Yellowtail in 1967). The risk, however, was deemed to be minimal. According to W.L. Rusho, longtime public affairs officer for Reclamation, including the period during the Glen Canyon Dam incident, “A well-managed reservoir should almost never spill, and then only for very short periods, after which the cavitation could be repaired.”
Wow. As an autistic obsessive researcher on all range of topics, I learned a lot from this. Great work on the vid.
Might have a bit of that going on myself... hard to decide which facts make it into the videos and which don't. So much information and moving parts around this topic. Appreciate you watching and stopping in to comment 👍🤠
Fantastic content! Thank you for making this video.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for the feedback 👍
Wait… an infrastructure issue in the United States? No way?! The government always uses our taxes appropriately…
Every time the government "wastes money" the fraud is committed by a for profit business. Private businesses bilking taxpayers is what keeps rich people rich.
Nice tight report. Good graphics. Subscribed. 👍
Welcome aboard! Thanks for watching and stopping in to leave some feedback👍
Any harmonic like a cavitation can be regulated with nested low-high forms. Just look at any river, like the Colorado, at Topsy Turvy past Cisco. Try experimenting on this and the solution will found. Pairs of high-low forms can elevate or depress fast moving water.
Concrete technology has made huge advances since the construction of the dam.
Cavitation…I learn so much from you guys! Seems pretty concerning to those of us who rely on Lake Mead’s water levels.
I was hoping for a strong 2023 winter/snowpack up north of you. Turned out to be just ok, correct?
Glad to hear! That's right, snowpack turned out to be just a bit above average. Peaked around 110% this year which isn't bad at all. We were certainly expecting worse, as the trend usually swings back after a wet winter. Unfortunately as you can see Mead still has problems upstream and downstream. Can't "catch a break" it seems!
Cavitation... Could you ensure the plumber reams his copper pipe after making a cut? Otherwise, you will end up with leaks.
I essentially grew up on Lake Powell, as my family would camp every weekend in the summer in Farley Canyon up by Hite Marina. Nothing would please me more than to tear that damn dam down and start restoring the river to its former glory.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing! I've noticed many people who saw the canyon before it was flooded, or were around in the early days of the lake are still hoping the dam is decommissioned!
@@mojo.adventures Have you ever read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey?
Say that 3 times fast, damn dam down
Glen Canyon Dam is probably the biggest ecological activist misstep in US history. It never should have existed, but the activists were fighting, successfully, another proposed dam on the Colorado River. When it became obvious that they would succeed in preventing the other dam from being built, the far more damaging Glen Canyon Dam was kept under the radar until construction began so that the activists would not find out and attempt to protect the canyon (and 'rob' them of yet another Colorado River dam).
I have not read Desert Solitaire, but I have heard it recommended by viewers now that you mention it👍 I'm currently reading "Cadillac Desert" which was also recommended by a bunch of viewers. Ironically enough we picked it up at the Lake Mead Visitors Center. I have a lot of information to go through on this topic!
Back to the drawing board. Not the first dam ever built with flaws that were not well understood in the design phase.
Nice presentation
i wish they just did the same as last year and let the water rise. Califonia releases so much water... yet they take the most. Just feels like greed. Why can't they just lower the water released for 3 years... 7,500,000M is not efficient enough. should be much lower like 5M so both dams can survive into the future
I do also! What a great water year it was for both reservoirs👍 It's sad knowing Mead could recover to it's former glory within a few seasons if the outflows were just throttled like at Powell. It seems the further downstream the river you go the worse the dependance, waste, and abuse. It's all backwards. All this was bound to come to a head eventually. Thanks for watching and commenting!
People in every state have the same answer for their problems….
Californians…..👍🤡
@@mojo.adventures its all about the stupid alfalfa grown in CA. But like last year with minimal water let go. Corruption until we all have no water.
Love the content of the Colorado. Keep it up!
"Antique plumbing" ?? I remember a National Geographic article before the damming of Powel River. You made me feel old but rightfully so. My plumbing is in about the same condition.😏
Very interesting. Is this a sediment problem this time or was there concrete lost in the tube? Either way is there an estimate for clean up/repair. My opinion would be to save the dams if at all possible. No dam means no water reserve. It also would mean alternative power. Reduced demand down stream seems to be the best solution for keeping both. California has the best options for alternative water sources either by conserving snow melt and or building desalination plants all along the SoCal coast.
No sediment problems this time, just cavitation eating away at the pipes again! The penstocks and river works outlet are all steel piping so I would have to guess it's eating away at the joints, or possibly infiltrating outside the pipes where it shouldn't and they just started noticing it. No estimates or solutions yet as the ball is just getting rolling on all that... I'm sure you know how federal projects work. It seems USBR has been putting off major renovations to the dam for a while. It's coming to an "all or nothing" situation for Glen Canyon Dam. Time to either fix it or leave it! Thank you for watching and commenting 👍
Sonoluminescense is a mysterious problem, and it's odd that there aren't more definitive explanations and solutions to the problems encountered by it. Must be a really good reason.
We could stop watering the lawns altogether!
That and growing toxic food to be shipped all over the world.
85% of the water in the Glen Canyon system goes to growing food. 62% of that is for cattle feed crops. In the upper basin, over 90% of the is for cattle feed crops.
About 50% of the alfalfa and 30% of the hay grown with Colorado River water is exported out of the country.
It's bullshit and needs to stop.
I’m gonna keep my beautiful lawn watered…
Rewild suburbia!
glen canyon dam does NOT provide irrigation water.
The river outlet works are not as described: "antique." They are a relatively new design compared to those at Hoover. They also were never designed to make releases that simulate a flood. That is a much more recent idea that was proposed decades after the dam was built. They are for low-level and emergency releases. The problem with discharging high flow while the reservoir is low is that there is not enough back-pressure on the valves to prevent cavitation within the pipes. They are at the limits of operation. Releasing the same flow with the reservoir at much higher levels would not likely cause cavitation issues because the valves would not be fully open, and a higher pressure would be present within the pipes upstream from the valves. Cavitation is the result of negative pressures developing in the pipe, and higher pressure can counteract its formation. The engineers from the 1950s were not likely as aware of cavitation issues or how to prevent them as engineers are today. Additionally, dam operators were not necessarily aware that cavitation could develop unless modern engineers did a study and recommended operational restrictions. The original engineers may not have proposed any restrictions to flow at low reservoir levels.
Thank you for the good information!👍 Backpressure makes a lot of sense. It seems like just about everything along the Colorado is being run in a way that it was never designed for these days. It's no wonder we're in this situation. Now we watch in a few months as every outlets fawns over the low levels at Lake Mead. Fix one problem on the river... cause another.
In my 30 years of water management I have seen cavation do this damage before . (what the erosion in the pipes is caused from) . The engineers surely are aware of this. Velocity of the water causes air bubbles and scrubs the surface and the air bubbles act like little explosions on the surface. With that said concrete pipes are not durable. 🤔 so maybe a liner of stronger steel or stainless liners be used. Just a thought.
God forbid you provide such a logical recommendation to these agenda driven maniacs… 😂
Very informative video. Thanks! Question: are the diversion tunnels still in place (or could be re-opened?)
Thank you, appreciate you watching! The diversion tunnels have obviously been well plugged with solid concrete, but the engineering is still there. The problem that comes to mind is how to drain the lake enough to work on it, without having a low level bypass installed to begin with. That would be a LOT of pumping and dredging, but they did it at the bottom of Lake Mead for the 3rd intake, so I'm sure it's possible!
Lake Powell water levels won't drop below the River Outlet Bypass, when the reservoir is at that level leave them open and the river will continue flowing without causing cavitation problems in the pipes.
This is from the 1983 incident at Glen Canyon. Remember, this involved the spillway tunnel, not the pipes they are speaking of now:
The spillways at Glen Canyon Dam are located upstream of the dam and each spillway is controlled by two 40-foot by 52.5-foot radial gates. Flood releases through the spillways enter into steeply sloped (55 degrees below horizontal) spillway tunnels which connect to the downstream portion of the original diversion tunnels, which were used to divert the river during construction of the dam. A drawing of the spillway tunnel profile is shown on this page.
Constructing the spillways in this way, where hundreds of linear feet of each 41-foot diameter diversion tunnel are repurposed, was both quicker and cheaper to construct. The tradeoff, however, was that the bend where the spillway tunnel meets the diversion tunnel created the potential for cavitation. This danger was known by Reclamation, with both Hoover Dam and Yellowtail Dam experiencing damage from cavitation in their similarly configured spillway tunnels (Hoover in 1941 and Yellowtail in 1967). The risk, however, was deemed to be minimal. According to W.L. Rusho, longtime public affairs officer for Reclamation, including the period during the Glen Canyon Dam incident, “A well-managed reservoir should almost never spill, and then only for very short periods, after which the cavitation could be repaired.”
Early in the morning of June 6th, operators heard loud rumbling noises coming from the left spillway and observed material being ejected at the spillway outlet. The right spillway gates were opened, and the left gates were closed in order to allow for Reclamation engineers to access the tunnel spillway and assess the situation. What they saw was cavitation damage - chunks of concrete missing at the invert of the “elbow” - where the steeply-sloped spillway tunnel meets the horizontal diversion tunnel.
For the following weeks, flows were primarily sent through the left spillway, and flows through the right spillway were held much lower. The right spillway tunnel was seen as being potentially more dangerous to the foundation of the dam because the right spillway tunnel “elbow” was nearer to the dam foundation than the left one, and as such the right tunnel posed a greater risk should cavitation damage reach the surrounding sandstone and spread horizontally. In late June, however, due to increased inflows, the operators were left with no choice but to pass more than 20,000 cfs through each of the spillways.
The reservoir elevation peaked at 3708.4 feet, 6.6 feet below the top of dam in mid-July, after which the discharges through the spillways were throttled down and eventually the spillway gates were completely shut. Once the spillway tunnels were dewatered and inspections could be conducted, the extent of the damage was finally observed. Engineers saw a 32‑foot-deep, 40‑foot-wide and 180‑foot-long crater at the elbow of the left spillway tunnel. Repairs commenced immediately, requiring over 3,000 cubic yards of concrete to backfill and repair the damaged tunnel linings.
Prior to the 1983 incident, engineers had identified the need to retrofit the spillway tunnels at Glen Canyon Dam with aeration slots as a cavitation control measure. However, the design had not been completed by the time the spillways were needed to pass the 1983 flood. Borrowing from their experience at Yellowtail Dam, Reclamation engineers designed air slots to be constructed while the spillway tunnels were being repaired. The air slots work by entraining air into the flowing water. This mixture of air and water is more compressible, which allows it to absorb the impact of the collapsing cavitation bubbles, thereby protecting the spillway tunnel surfaces from wear and damage caused by the cavitation.
Repairs of the spillway tunnels were complete in time for the 1984 flood season, which marked another season of above-average flows. The spillways performed well and didn’t exhibit any signs of cavitation following the 1984 floods. It has been many years since the spillways at Glen Canyon Dam have flowed.
Throughout this incident, the operators at Glen Canyon Dam were forced to make difficult, critical decisions without a full understanding of what was occurring within the spillway tunnels. When damage to the left spillway tunnel had occurred, inflows were still projected to rise and preventing damage to the spillways had long since ceased being a consideration. The goal had become to save Glen Canyon Dam from failing and sending a 500‑foot wall of water screaming down the Colorado River, overtopping Hoover Dam and other major dams downstream, and severely damaging the water supply to much of the arid southwest which depends on the dams and reservoirs along the Colorado River.
Following this incident, Reclamation conducted detailed forensic investigations to better understand what exactly had occurred. The investigation identified the initiator of the cavitation to have been a 6.5 mm high calcite deposit which formed near the invert of the spillway tunnel. Another area of damage in the left spillway tunnel was found to have been caused by a failed epoxy patch which had been used to repair the hole left by a grout pipe⁷.
A quarter inch lime deposit wrecked an entire drain....
Right.
Thank God there's never any dirt or foreign material in the water.
Not shooting the messenger, just the text. Thank you for posting it. It should be obvious by now our government run operations have been an incompetent joke for at least the last 75 years.
Excellent explanation.
@@gregwarner3753 Yes it was. This is the guy that wrote it:
Andy Lynch, P.E.
Title: Project Hydrology and Hydraulics Engineer
A few years before this incident, the USBR had begun work on an engineering monograph to explain cavitation in spillway and other waterways. Details of an airslot for Glen Canyon were already proposed before the flood occurred, but there was not enough time to implement it. As it turns out, discharging much higher than 20,000 cfs would have resulted in much less damage, which seemed counterintuitive at the time. Since the damage to the spillway was downstream from the dam, the dam was probably not in danger of failing, but at the time, the decision makers at USBR did not know that.
Wonderful and informative explanations, thank you. I’m wondering if today’s tunneling machines would possibly offer a solution to build a lower bypass tunnel at a relatively reasonable price for a backup solution?
Good report. Indeed a problem with no easy... or inexpensive solution. This will encourage the dismantlers.
Thanks @sammyhead, indeed it seems the engineers just never planned for Lake Powell to ever get below the River Works Outlet. I am somewhat surprised to learn that not all dams are designed with a low-level / sediment bypass. I am sure the USBR is already weighing whether it is more cost effective to fix the whole system or partially decommission it.
Cavitation can be mitigated by strategically placing breather holes along the overflow to prevent significant decreases in pressure.
Repair the damage, then construct, design straightener to cause water to flow in an laminar fashion reduce the flow per each discharge thus reducing turbulence, the straightener to be installed up stream of the down stream discharge points, reduce the flow, reducing flow due to past design errors
2:43 The GIV gets everywhere
😂😂😂 Had to go back and look... yeah he does look like Mike! GiUT👍
Thanks!
You bet! Really appreciate your continued support on the channel👍
Would it be possible to build a coffer dam around one spillway entrance, then build an additional gated bypass tunnel connecting the lake to the spillway at a low water level, then the spillway can be used at a much greater release rate instead of the river works?
That is an interesting solution actually! It would save money connecting to the already built spillway tunnel. Ideally it would have to be pretty low to allow the silt to flush also. Just waiting to see what the USBR is thinking of pursuing now... if anything. I have a feeling if the water levels rise again this will fade into memory until the next problem arises.
Time to install a new dam and totally open the existing to put equal pressure on both sides.
Tax all businesses and individuals in the Colorado River Compact states to pay for a new dam or a bypass. You have chosen to live in a desert.
Colorado really needs to start releasing water into the Arkansas... Thing is so low we have to mow.the river in Kansas... Colorado needs to stop hording these rivers...
Does it make a big difference - other than buying us just some few more years till the inevitable happens - to draw down Lake Powell to 3370 feet (and after that, outflows will automatically reduce to match inflows) instead of reducing outflows now and keeping the lake slightly above 3490?
It won't make much of a difference unless they decide to overhaul the whole system. I think what you describe is the exact idea the USBR has when they say to "decommission" the dam.
@@mojo.adventures I would think that "decommission" the dam means to tear it down completely or to re-open the diversion tunnels so Lake Powell would be gone completely. Then, the flow rate slightly downriver of the former dam site would "automatically" always be exactly the same as slightly upriver. However, the dam operators could emulate that behavior without tearing the dam down - keep it slightly above minimum power pool an keep outflows (through the turbines) always exactly the same as the instantaneous inflows. We would lose some water to evaporation but we could still produce some electricity. An if we say that the overall outflow per (day|week|month|year) has to be exactly the same as the inflow in that time period minus evaporation, we could have some flexibility to produce peak power. Not sure whether it is wise to "decommission" an existing infrastructure in the sense of destroying it.
This is why you don't cut corporate taxes.
USA USA glad our infrastructure is in tip top condition.
Is there a type of metal that would be hard/strong enough to withstand cavitation if used to line the riverworks spillways?
From the feedback I'm seeing in here, no rubber/poly compound could withstand the forces of cavitation at this level. Even specially formulated concrete is susceptible. Looks like the best solution is to prevent or introduce cavitation in a pre-emptive controlled way like they did in the spillways.
Question is why are penstock inlets half way up the dam when if the penstock inlet was at the bottom original river flow level it would produce more power for less water and the need for sediment release valves wouldnt really be needed might be time to drill new inlets from the low side into the dam
That's the multi-million dollar question! It seems the engineers just never expected water levels to drop below the River Works inlet. An epic oversight, especially considering Glen Canyon was always just a secondary reservoir
Infrastructure is not forever , while kicking the can down the road is ubiquitous.
Eventually, one or the other has to give .
Enjoyed content and length
Thank you for watching, appreciate the feedback!👍
Aloha hugs 🤗 smooth Videi awesome editing
Thank you for the aloha and feedback! 🤗 Welcome to the channel from the 9th Island 🤙
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
Excellent quote! That's why whiskey is for drinking in the west👍Unfortunately for me, all my bad habits died when I left the service...
Valhalla!
You'll be hard pushed to find a material that can support that flow rate of water, causing that much caviation without suffering damage.
large scale atmospheric venting and longer lower pitch runs. Cavitation is from fast moving water and or vacuum pressure. Open top spiral out from top to bottom gutters getting wider as you go down would help with the speed of the water as well. Smaller inlet then outlet/run would get your less energy as area increases pressure decreases.
Interesting, thank you for sharing that bit of engineering! I know they solved the problem in the spillways with a cavitation ring that introduced air at the top. It seems they didn't have any idea of these problems when the dams were engineered... and it wasn't that long ago. Moving forward I would hope all these solutions are engineered into the designs.
Like so many other engineering projects in the 20th century I guess the environment impact study prior to the Glen Canyon being built didn’t factor in the huge SW drought the last decade.
@stevedpage114 But who could have predicted that there'd be droughts in the desert? 😂😂
Un-dam it. Let nature take over.
That would mean no drinking water for tens of millions of people
US was supposed to get water from Canada 60 years ago with network of canals and pipes
That is interesting I will look into this further, thanks! At this point though... it might have been a good thing it didn't happen. There weren't really up and up on the hydrology data... even in the 60's.
How much water gets taken out of the river now before it gets to the Dams?
So it is fair to say if a situation arose when massive flooding happened and this dam had to release massive amounts of water for an extended time , the dam may fail at the pipes
That about sums it up! It would be a "just send it" situation as topping the dam would be even more catastrophic. On the other hand, if the water level fell too LOW, the dam also couldn't release any water downstream because the bypass intake is too high. Catch 22.
Going to be a bad year. The heat will evorapate water to. Big problem 🤞
All the CA demands can be lessened by making CA finish the initial planned # of reservoirs and capacity. CA turning to desalination and aquifer replenishment will also lessen the needs. The power needs can be lessened through the SW by requiring every new home to have solar power production 10% above their baseline usage reducing the need for power from the dams. Ending the mismanagement in CA will retard the water requirements leaving more for the inland states. OR too could do a better job of water management and sell water to NV. Water could be better managed along the Mississippi and its tributaries creating more reservoirs and saving flood waters via pumping to those reservoirs and into the aquifers.
I do not buy into the shortage of water knowing how it has been mismanaged. The Salton Sea in CA is below sea level and could be filled to sea level with water from the Sea of Cortez which would increase the moisture from evaporation and supply a source for desalination. The power could come from the sun that is shining in the deserts most days. The populations of all these water concern states could be reduced by 10s of millions just be removing non-citizens (illegals being the most impactful). Every dry lake in the desert near the Sea of Cortez and the Salton Sea could be filled with salt water.
More than this could be done, but I suspect these alone would have a huge impact.
Carbon fiber lining to protect the inside of the piping perhaps
Interesting
Edward Abbey's prayer for a "strategic earthquake" was not answered, so perhaps cavitation will persist to the point where removal of this dam will be necessary.
Interesting, I'm just learning about Edward Abbey's take on this right now!👍
Sorry I’m in Australia, is glen canyon dam the Hoover dam ?
Welcome from Australia! The Glen Canyon Dam is just upstream of the Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Utah. Hoover Dam here outside Las Vegas created Lake Mead, and Glen Canyon Dam created Lake Powell around 30 years later. Hope that clears it up a bit!
The sediment problem is easy to solve. Just let people know there could be gold in the sediment. Free for the taking. They just have to move the sediment to a designated place. They'll have that sucker dug out fast.
And I would be one of those people... 😂 I am currently chasing a historical tale of placer gold being found underneath what is now Lake Mead near a former sweeping bank of the Colorado. That is a video and tale for another time though...
Multiple siphons running over the road way.
12° x as many as required.
A simple priming pump on the other side.
Once it's flowing, move to the next. Some basic scaffolding will have to be made.
Why does this problem occur in the bypass tunnels and not the penstocks?
From what I'm understanding, part of it is due to the backpressure here... the turbines restrict flow through the penstocks keeping it relatively constant. I can only guess part of it is due to the pitch of the pipes like it was in the spillways. We are still waiting on the USBR to publish more details on what they've found.
Would it be feasible to install a controlled siphon over the top of the dam ?
No
No. Siphons have a very limited draw height. I think it's about 30 feet. They simply don't lift water any higher than that.
Sam Kinison said it best, if you want to help these people send them uhauls.
Live where the food is
Why does Cavitation not occur in the Penstocks?
There are much lower flow velocities in penstocks, so not usually.
@@johnt1877 - There's also back pressure.
I believe it has to do with the pitch of the piping, the material, and imperfections. Apparently the spillway cavitation started over a walnut sized concrete lump sticking up into the flow. It was made possible because of the steepness at the top of the spillways also. In the case of the penstocks, the pitch isn't as great, the piping is steel, and there is backpressure from pushing the turbines.
Baffle the vortices- use internal tube floats as interrupters
This could mean MAJOR PROBLEMS for the U.S. Southwest States and it's populace!!!
Maybe they shouldn’t live in a place that doesn’t have enough water in the first place.
You nailed it! All the extreme water wasters playing "chicken" over the last few years too. "I'm not changing, make the people upstream change!!" At the end of the river they don't even understand the magnitude of the situation. They don't have a visual on Lake Mead week in week out like we do here. Everything will be coming to a head soon in 2026. Just checked out your channel too... good stuff! Happy trails out there fellow adventurer🤠
@@Justinoid1 Maybe they shouldn't have been born .... too many people use too much water.
Far too many people taking water from the Colorado River. Especially CA.
Be careful someone from California is gonna pretend to be hurt from the truth
You'd think they would be sleeved with replaceable steel.
A viable, permanent, albeit very expensive, solution might be to “sleeve” those pipes with either Titanium pipe sleeves or diamond-encrusted hardened steel pipe sleeves.
Difficult and complicated problem without an obvious solution.
Coat everything with a rubberized material that will flex against cavitation shockwaves
You build one dam in front of the other dam to dam up the river while you finish the new dam. Does anyone game any more dam questions?
I would like to know what in the design led to cavitation
I thnk it was the water.
I am hoping for more details to be released, but my guess is the steep pitch of pipes played a part and there is little backpressure on the river works outlet.
You’re telling me that they found these problems years after the Hoover dam problems were found? What happened to the yearly inspection report?!
Good question! Those were actually the spillways at Glen Canyon Dam that were damaged... so it was the SAME dam just 40 years apart. Hoover Dam didn't seem to have the same problems with cavitation I'm guessing because the spillway pitch wasn't so steep like it is here at Glen Canyon Dam.
Cubic feet does not give a familiar or recognizable measure of the volume. Either use gallons as unit or and preferably metric units, please.
Copy that, thank you for the suggestion! I currently relay the data just as it is reported by the USBR 👍
@@mojo.adventures
Just multiply the archaic CF by 35.3146 to get metric tonnes. 😇
These dams should never have been built!
Sounds like you better get on fixing this hurry people depend on you
They should drill a few holes, and hire a few Dutch boys for when the water is high..... They will know what to do......
if they could make that outflow laminar that would be great
Standing wave always exists.
And the people wanting it to stay are the people who live now and never could believe how beautiful it all was before one or two people could see a way to make vast wealth of nature All for themselves even now there's alternatives that can do the job of creating electricity almost for free but there's no money in that
I wonder how much time we realistically have before we reach dead pool at both dams?! My solution was 20 years ago when they closed San Onofre. We should have converted it into a de-cell plant and put the water in Powel and Mead. Way to late now, we might be in trouble in just a few years?!
I don't think we will reach deadpool in both dams unless the USBR continues this trend of trying to save both reservoirs even during drought years. They have always held Lake Mead as the primary reservoir of the Colorado. It seems Lake Powell might have been a little bit too ambitious for the supplies we were given over the last century!
@@mojo.adventures Yes it will be tough because Southern Utah relies on Powell for hydro power. So that dam needs to stay above the power generation level. But will it? Low snow pack level is nearly gone! Keep these stories up to date please! I need to know if I have to move to Idaho...lol...!!
Lesson # 1 , you can’t live in the desert 🌵 with borrowed/ stolen water 💦
Why not just stop releasing water until pool level rises up to the Penstock levels for power generation, then just maintain river flow through the turbines. It might mean a month when the Colorado faces low flow until dam level recovers.
One option might actually be to cut down the size of lake mead itself which would reduce evaporation, simply raise the water level but reduce the actual footprint of lake mead maybe creating a sectional dam that can be opened and closed to expand lake mead if needed.
Easier said than done
@@WN_Byers Sure but I would think it is at least simple to cut down the size of Lake Mead overall with earth works
There would probably not be a problem at all if there wasn't a need for the power generated at both dams. This is clean power. During a prolonged drought, there has been a balancing act to keep both powerplants working. Of course, they could lower the reservoir, but that would mean whole communities would have to go without power. All these operations issues seem to bring a lot of drama, but the real issue at both dams is maintaining power generation.
@@johnt1877 But wouldn't making the lake smaller help to boost electricity generation by keeping the water level higher naturally?
@@drscopeify to be honest, you are being really hubristic
Only a bit facetious is to pray we are not headed into 0ne of the century long doubts then Colorado basin has had in the past.
Dam is less than 60 years old. Seems like very poor planning to me.
Sooo its been an issue for literally 40 years now and nothing has been done about it. Figures
Didn't Ed Abbey have a solution to this problem?
Just reading about this for the first time now... if you are referencing when he mentioned a seismic event👍
I have antique plumbing, so does my house
Hey as long as it works it works! (unlike here) 😉 Might be better even if you start going into the whole copper/solder vs PEX/pro-press argument
So for 40 years they didn’t address any of these issues?
🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 THE LION WAS HERE 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 No. 840
They have been watching this for years. The high flow was too see if they would get damaged. They got an answer. If the pool is low they will not have the pressure to stop the cavitation. At full pool they don't surfer from cavitation. Now they know that the penstocks don't work the way they designed them to.
Just an excuse to keep water to produce electricity always.