American Scene

By | Thursday, September 11, 2008

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ARIZONA

Canyon sandbars rapidly eroding

PHOENIX | Newly built-up sandbars crucial to wildlife in the Grand Canyon have eroded rapidly in the past four months, some shrinking back to the size they were before a costly man-made flood.

Torrents of water were released from the Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line in March to mimic natural flooding and rebuild sandbars along the 277-mile river in the Grand Canyon, where the ecosystem was forever changed by the dam's construction more than four decades ago.

Officials had expected erosion following the three-day flood, but they hadn't expected so much so fast.

"Circumstances conspired against our being able to protect the beaches as long as we had hoped," Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin said Tuesday. "Substantial erosion has occurred."

The accelerated erosion is the result of a requirement to release extra water from Lake Powell above the dam into the Colorado River, said John Hammill, chief of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

NEVADA

Resort to revive Mirage's volcano fire

LAS VEGAS | Real volcanos may take millennia to form, but in Las Vegas they can take just 20 years to look dated.

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