LAKE POWELL, Ariz. — It used to be one of Arizona’s best kept secrets. Now, the ‘No Wake’ signs at Lake Powell’s Antelope Point Marina are printed in four languages.
People from all over the world come to the man-made reservoir and the surrounding Glen Canyon National Recreation Area for a simple reason: there are not many places on Earth like it. In 2023, the desert playground four-and-a-half hours north of Phoenix saw nearly 500,000 more visitors than the Grand Canyon.
But Lake Powell is often humbled and haunted by a different number; a level that causes pre-vacation anxiety for families who have an 80-foot house yacht reserved for the week.
They call the marinas and even the city of Page Chamber of Commerce for reassurance.
“Is there enough water this summer?”
It is not a question Kenneth Runnels, Antelope Point Holdings chief administrator, likes to even think about.
“There will always be a lake here,” Runnels said. “The chances of it drying up are almost nil.”
The lake would not be here without the Glen Canyon dam, and neither would the city of Page, which was established in 1957 as a housing camp for dam builders.
“The lake is our livelihood,” said Page Mayor Bill Diak. “We’re using more water out of the bank than we’ve got coming in.”
The “bank” he is referring to is the dam. If Lake Powell was a bathtub, the dam would be its drain plug. Like a bathtub, the lake’s canyon walls have rings showing how high the water has been.
The Glen Canyon dam, completed in 1963, was designed to store Colorado River water and sustain the needs of Southwest cities, industries and agriculture, especially in times of drought. Those needs are greater than they were 60 years ago.
“We do need to do a better job of water conservation. We cannot continue to use the water if it is not there,” Diak said. “They say ‘whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting’ in the West.”
There was good news in June when the lake reached its highest water level in three years. But Lake Powell was still 118 feet below full pool level or full capacity.
Even at this level, the water at Antelope Point Marina is still hundreds of feet deep — you just need a 1,600-foot dynamite-blasted concrete ramp to reach it.
“At the time it was made, it was adequate because the water levels were higher,” Runnels said.
This private boat launch at Antelope Point reopened a few years ago when the water started rising. Fifty dollars gets you in and out of the water, but only staff are allowed to back boat trailers down the long ramp. The public launch on the other side of the marina remains closed, except to kayakers.
Ambassador Guides owner and captain Bill McBurney moors his fishing charter boat at the 3,500-foot-long marina Runnels oversees — the structure looks like a floating space station from Google Earth.
In his 40 years on the lake, McBurney can only remember a handful of times the lake was at full capacity, or full pool, at 3,700 feet above average sea level.
The first time it happened was in June 1980. The last time was June 1985, although the water level came within a few feet several times during the mid 80s and 90s. This summer, the lake’s level is 3,585 feet.
Diak said climate change is not helping Lake Powell’s situation. He worries about what the lake could look like 30 years from now, and what that could mean for the small city of Page.
“It didn’t exist before they built the dam and without this lake, it wouldn’t exist either,” Diak said.
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