On Feb. 11, Bookworks hosted author Zak Podmore to talk about and sign his recent book “Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River.”
Bookseller and partner in Bookworks, D.J. Green, said the event was part of the Writing in the Wild program, which is in partnership with the Leopold Writing Program.
The Leopold Writing Program’s website reads that a percentage of proceeds go to the program, in support of its “mission to inspire an ethic of caring for our planet by cultivating diverse voices through the spoken and written word.”
This was the first book event award-winning author and journalist Zak Podmore has done outside the Colorado River Basin, he said. He has been an environmental journalist for many years, and said “Life After Dead Pool” is a positive story.
The book follows the collapse of the Lake Powell reservoir through storytelling and science, and it depicts the effects on people and the surrounding landscape. It also looks at ecological reemergence as a result of the changes in the land.
Lake Powell used to be completely full in 1999, and as of 2023, it was only about 20% full, Podmore said. The lake was formed due to the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam over the Colorado River, which flooded part of the canyon and formed the Lake Powell reservoir.
“If Lake Powell were to drop,” Podmore said, “it would be called dead pool.”
This is why the book is titled “Life After Dead Pool”: it deals with the effects of the reservoir water level dropping this far.
We may be approaching dead pool in just a couple of dry winters, Podmore said.
He also said the Colorado River has seen a reduction in flow, and that this “drought that we’ve been in for 25 years now is completely changing how we approach Glen Canyon.”
The issues around the drying up of Lake Powell and the reemergence of the once-flooded areas of the Glen Canyon Dam were main subjects during the book talk.
Podmore read a few passages from the book, which contained personal stories about his kayaking adventures around Lake Powell.
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Podmore summed the lake’s issue up into three terms: the bad, the ugly and the good, which is where the hopeful subject of the book is explored.
“The bad” relates to the relative dryness of the Southwest, and how “water use in the Colorado River basin has remained pretty flat” despite a 20% reduction in water flow, he said.
“The ugly” refers to mud banks, which Podmore encountered while exploring Lake Powell. The mud is part of what is called the Dominy Formation. Podmore described these “glaciers of mud” as sediment that is dropped off around Lake Powell.
“The good” refers to “the ecological rebirth of Glen Canyon.” The Dominy Formation sediments play a part in the regrowth of the ecosystem on the banks that become revealed as the water dries up.
There are, according to Podmore, invasive species moving back in, but there are also cattails, cottonwoods, willows, beavers and other native fauna.
“The native species are competing with the invasive species,” he said.
The dropping waters also reveal pottery, arrowhead shards and rock art.
“I think it’s a really inspiring time,” Podmore said.
Emmett Di Mauro is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
