As Lake Powell shrinks, the Colorado River is coming back to life
New book on the remarkable ecological rebirth in Glen Canyon. Available in hardcover and paperback, August 2024.
Overview
Award-winning journalist Zak Podmore brings to life the magnificent terrain and complex politics of the Colorado River, its dying reservoirs, and the natural and cultural histories of Glen Canyon that are reemerging as Lake Powell shrinks to record lows.
Since it began filling in 1963, Lake Powell has been central to water management for much of the western US. But now, after more than two decades of drought, the Colorado River has been stretched to the breaking point. Due to a changing climate and design flaws in the Glen Canyon Dam, this once-massive reservoir is on the brink of collapse — leaving the millions of people who depend on its waters at risk. Podmore explores the challenges ahead with a focus on the bright side of the water crisis: the surprising ecological rebirth that’s already unfolding in Glen Canyon.
Through clear science writing and lyrical prose, Life After Dead Pool debunks the notion that the West’s water challenges are unsolvable and invites us to secure a future where Glen Canyon returns in its wild glory and the Colorado River once again runs free.
Advance Praise for Life After Dead Pool
“Wallace Stegner would be unsurprised, and Ed Abbey grimly pleased, to know that Lake Powell is now dying the death it so richly deserves. Dave Foreman too—he might be smiling down at the spectacle from some heavenly planet, though of course Dave always preferred Earth first. Anyone who cherishes the great wild canyons of the West—Glen Canyon and all the rest—may take solace, and insight, and maybe even hope from this fascinating account of how climate change and drought are forcing a radical reimagining of western water management. The good news, as Zak Podmore reminds us, is that, despite human doltishness, nature abides.”
— David Quammen, author of Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus
“Zak Podmore explores a future without Glen Canyon Dam through the lens of a journalist and the soul of an adventurer. The future of water management in the West starts with asking tough questions, and Podmore investigates the issue’s centerpiece.”
–– Morgan Sjogren, journalist and author of Path of Light: A Walk Through Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon
“Though it follows in the proud tradition of classic western water books like Mark Reisner’s Cadillac Desert, Life After Dead Pool blazes its own original path. Through writing that is both personal and immaculately reported, Zak Podmore sidesteps some of what have become the cliches of writing about “Lake Foul,” giving us the joys of the place along with the grumbles. It is a fresh take on the present and future of the Colorado River, beyond nostalgia, as he witnesses long-buried canyons emerge and flower with native plants, and it offers a plan both visionary and practical, on how the river can, once again, redeem the region.”
— David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West
“While water may be one of the West’s most intractable issues, intrepid journalist Zak Podmore offers us a hopeful and practical solution, shared from the seat of his kayak on a years-long journey through a dying reservoir. Around every bend is more proof of a new paradigm as Podmore interviews a host of experts, shares a fascinating history and bears witness to a robust natural ecosystem that is miraculously emerging from the depths of what was considered one of the worst environmental crimes of the twentieth century.”
— Annette McGivney, author of Pure Land and Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West
“By taking us into lost and reemerging landscapes of Glen Canyon, Podmore deepens our understanding and calls us to action to protect the greatest resource we have in the desert—water.”
–– Calvin Crosby, The King’s English Bookshop
Praise for Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West
“Zak Podmore has written a book of promise: a promise beauty matters; a promise that history lives through us; a promise that the Colorado River teaches us about life and death and the depth of both.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Hour of the Land and Erosion
About the Author
Zak Podmore is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about water and conservation issues in the western United States. His first book, Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West (Torrey House Press), was selected for Outside magazine’s 12 Favorite Earth Day Reads and the Pacific Standard‘s 25 Must-Read Books of Fall 2019. He is the recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers award and was the Entrada Institute’s writer-in-residence in 2023. Most recently, Zak was the southern Utah reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune. He lives in Bluff, Utah.
Zak Podmore 