It's Confirmed! Lake Powell Is 36 Feet From Going Dark | Glen Canyon Dam

In the summer of 1983, engineers bolted sheets of plywood on top of Glen Canyon Dam's spillway gates. It was the only thing they had left. Behind the plywood: the full force of the Colorado River. Inside the dam's spillways, something invisible was tearing the concrete apart, and nobody could see it happening. The dam survived. Forty years later, it faces the opposite problem. Lake Powell, America's second-largest reservoir, is down to 23% full, about 36 feet above the level where the turbines stop turning (as of June 2026). Below that sits a line engineers call dead pool. This is the full story of Glen Canyon Dam: the 710-foot bet that built it, the flood that nearly took it, the force that ate its spillways from the inside, and what happens to the 25 million people downstream if the water keeps falling. It's Confirmed! Lake Powell Is 36 Feet From Going Dark | Glen Canyon Dam CHAPTERS 0:00 The Dam With 36 Feet Left 1:21 Act 1: The 710-Foot Bet 7:56 Act 2: 1983, Too Much Water 14:01 Act 3: Cavitation, the Force That Eats Concrete 17:41 Act 4: 2026, Too Little Water 25:25 Act 5: A Dam for a River That's Gone SOURCES Bureau of Reclamation water operations data (Lake Powell elevations, June 2026) Circle of Blue: "Glen Canyon Dam Faces Its Existential Moment" (2026) ASDSO Dam Failures and Lessons Learned: Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona (1983) "Glen Canyon Dam Spillway Tunnel Repairs, 1983-1984" (Bureau of Reclamation record) High Country News: "The coming failure of Glen Canyon Dam" Lake Powell Chronicle: "A Reservoir at the Crossroads" (2026) Salt Lake Tribune / Great Salt Lake Collaborative reporting on the River Outlet Works USGS and the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program technical records IMAGE CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons) Andy Pernick, Bureau of Reclamation (CC BY-SA 2.0) · John Brighenti (CC BY 2.0) · flamouroux (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Christian David (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Kognos (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Adbar (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Pierre André Leclercq (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Kyle Hawton (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Jaykhuang (CC BY 4.0) · Chan T. Y. & Lin C. W., MNHN (CC BY 4.0) · Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (CC BY 2.0) · Duk (CC BY 2.5) Archival photography: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, National Archives, NPS, USGS, NASA (public domain). Additional footage: Pexels and Pixabay. Music from #InAudio: https://inaudio.org/ Track Names: Cold Cinema - Unforgiven Infraction Music - A Long Way Out Independence - Abandoned Infraction Music - A New Dawn Cold Cinema - End of an Era