Heather Rankin Lake Powell Real Estate

For the past 30 some odd years Big Water, Utah, has been celebrating Bird Day. For many years Bird Day was a Utah holiday and when it was shelved Big Water community kept it up. Bird Day started as a way to celebrate the seagulls eating the crickets that saved the crops of the Mormon Pioneers. This year Bird Day was held April 26th.

Bird Day is a fun filled, old fashioned, carnival day for the kids of all ages. There were sack races, balloon tosses, 3-legged races, an art contest, a bake off, the ever popular treasure hunt and scavenger hunt, and of course, the EGG toss. Guessing the amount of eggs and candy in the baskets and voting on “Bird Awards” were two of the most popular activities. There were lots of folks entered in the arm wrestling and nail hammering contests as well.

Many thanks to the local folks who have worked for so many years to keep Bird Day something to look forward to each year in Big Water.

So the adults had fun with this one as well as the little kids. Egg Races. Put a raw egg in a spoon, run the length of the parking lot and don't drop the egg. Yeah!

Big kids got three nails and one small hammer, ladies got two nails and one small hammer, little guys got one nail and one LARGE hammer for the Nail Hammering Contest.

Ladies take arm wrestling pretty serious.

By the 6:30 p.m awards ceremony everyone looked like they had a wonderful, sun filled, fun day.

As of April 9, 2008 ~ homes, businesses and properties available on the Utah side of lake Powell. These are listings for Church Wells, Big Water and Clark Bench.

1 Commercial Building (boat storage)

5 Commercial Building Lots

2 Manufactured Homes

4 Homes

19 Residential Lots

1 Subdivision (Powell Springs)

There have been a couple of new listings this week so hopefully our inventory will keep going up!

Heather Rankin, ERA Utah Properties

Lake Powell Real Estate Blog

On Friday the good news started hitting the papers. It was a SUCCESS!!

For background on the March 2008 flood please see

FLOOD BACKGROUND

The general thought is that this flood is all about the endangered fishies. It is, no doubt, but in my book it is also about the sustainable habitat downstream that has been created by the dam, as well as us wee humans enjoyment of the resource.

Before I get to the news, it is somewhat fascinating that the Salt Lake Tribune's lead story on the flood was "Dam Test Revives Beaches, Gulps $4 million in electricty" while the Arizona Daily Sun out of Flagstaff "Big sandbars from big flood".

There are two distinct camps in this story, and several arms (no - not adjustable rate mortgages) to each camp.

Camp Environmental dislikes everything to do with the dam and feels it should be done away with. However, that camp has been much quieter the last seven or eight years we've been in a drought and Lake Powell levels have fallen as it provides water to the lower states.

Camp Electricity and Water Sports - well yes, most all of us like electricity and like to be able to flip a switch and have it work. 1.5 million folks get power from Glen Canyon Dam on any given day. Somewhere between 2 and 3 million people will visit Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area this year and enjoy this awesome resource.

My soapbox ~ The dam is here. The river is changed. The original fishies are struggling. The power is used. The water storage is used. Managing the dam to make everyoe happy is not going to occur. The Bureau of Reclamation and their adaptive management program have changed the way the dam is operated, drastically in the hope of mitigating damage.

On With The News...

"The results of a manmade flood in the Grand Canyon last week were immediate and substantial, adding as much as football field-sized areas of vital sediment to sandbars and banks along the Colorado River" according to Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin.

After returning from a five day trip down the river through the Grand Canyon he also said, "On a couple of big sandbars there were already beaver tracks, bighorn sheep tracks. You could see the animals already exploring new aspects of the old canyon."

He said the new sandbars range in size from small nooks and crannies to ones as large as football fields.

"It changes the feeling of the canyon as you see the sediment along the shoreline from a feeling of increased sterility to one of a greater amount of vibrance," Martin said. "The benefits are substantial."

So, how long will the sandbars and newly created habitat last? Some say 18 months, some say much longer. My thought is that we need to continue to monitor the river, continue to care and continue to act in a manner that is reasonable not only for the fishies but for all the people too.

No pun intended. Driving though Big Water has changed notably in the last few months. The new 55 mile per hour signs up are a welcome relief to many people on both sides of the Utah/Arizona border.

This is a story with a long history of local residents and elected officials attempting to have the speed limit reduced through Big Water. It is an idea whose time has come.

In April of last year, a local resident and business owner, Mike Miller, was injured and his car totaled while attempting to turn left off Highway 89. Thankfully, Mike survived but sustained serious injuries.

For years, city officials have been attempting to figure out how to have UDOT lower the speed limit through Big Water. Thankfully, the first step in the process has occurred and the limit is now 55 mph instead of 65.

Rick Parsons, Big Water Mayor, has been to numerous UDOT meetings trying to raise the warning flag of impending disaster. The flag got real with Mike’s accident.

Wayne Chapman, a Big Water resident, wrote an open letter to Governor Huntsman in July pleading the case for the lowering of the speed limit before a child is injured or killed.

Not to write my own editorial here but UDOT indicates the speed limit revolves around Big Water’s master plan. However, after 17 years of living here, there have been many people on town council and planning and zoning, who have tried to get this problem addressed to no avail. The traffic on Highway 89, especially in summer months with tourists and visitors to Lake Powell, increases dramatically over winter months. The vehicle that plowed into Mike’s car was a 22 wheeler semi-truck.

The new lower limit hopefully will become permanent and the first in a series of steps to make Big Water’s highway access safer and more visitor friendly.

To view the map of sign changes please click here: 55 Map Change

Seven of the last eight years the water flowing into Lake Powell from the Colorado River, and upper basin tributaries, has been in the state of drought. 2002 saw only 25% of average inflow in to the lake. Average is such a misleading word when used in describing events in the desert. Not much average happens here.

This year looks like, while not the end of the drought, to at least be a good water year. As of March 2, 2008 snowpack conditions above Lake Powell are at 124% of normal.

Lake Powell is a huge water storage tank. After all of these years of drought, it is low. That means the lake has been doing it’s job providing water to millions of people and agricultural uses downstream. The lake is currently 110 feet below full and is storing 45% of it’s overall capacity.

A wet spring could see an increase of 50 or more feet of water hit Lake Powell during our spring runoff time. Increase in lake elevation usually begins the end of April and winds up the first week of July. 50 feet would help the lake not only in storage capacity, but in recreational opportunities.

There are plenty of areas to “recreate” on at Lake Powell even with the lower water levels. However, tourism has been down here for several years due to a variety of reasons (another blog). The public perception that Lake Powell is empty, or gone, is but one of them. Maybe, as the lake begins to rise and with the media attention just having been focused here with the floods, we will see more tourists visiting.