What's Lost Beneath America's Biggest Dams?

What the film says

1. John Wesley Powell named Flaming Gorge on his 1869 expedition.

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2. Flaming Gorge Dam is 502 ft high, its reservoir extends 91 miles, and its plant is rated about 152 MW.

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3. In 1962, before the reservoir filled, managers poisoned about 445 miles of the Green River and tributaries with rotenone to remove 'trash' native fish in favor of trout and kokanee.

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4. From May 2022 to April 2023 Reclamation released about 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge to prop up Lake Powell.

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5. Glen Canyon Dam is 710 ft high and was built from 1956 to 1966; Eisenhower triggered the first blast by telegraph signal from Washington on October 15, 1956.

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6. Lake Powell first filled on June 22, 1980, more than 17 years after the dam closed; at full pool it stretches 186 miles.

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7. Glen Canyon Dam's minimum power pool is 3,490 ft and dead pool is 3,370 ft.

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8. After the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco pushed for Hetch Hetchy water; it had sought rights since 1901.

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9. Muir: 'Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.'

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10. President Wilson signed the Raker Act in 1913.

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11. Yosemite Valley gets about 100 times the visitors of Hetch Hetchy (about 44,000 a year).

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