"Water is flowing through two of three hydropower turbines in a blockish building at the base of Flaming Gorge Dam, so I can feel the floor buzzing — vibrations pulsating through my body — as Billy Elbrock leads me past the blue-and-yellow Westinghouse generators. The warehouse-like space is adorned with an American flag, and with the 1965 logo of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The electricity generated here, in northern Utah near the Wyoming state line, helps keep the lights on across 10 states. It’s made possible by a dam that interrupts the Green River, which flows into the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park hundreds of miles downstream before meandering southwest to Lake Powell, and then to Lake Mead — meaning as an Angeleno, I’ve been drinking this water my whole life.
Even with everything I know about the ecological damage wreaked by dams, I can’t help but be impressed.
Flaming Gorge is clearly a marvel of engineering, from pendulum-like “plumb lines” that help Reclamation employees ensure the 60-year-old concrete structure isn’t moving around too much, to “weep holes” that reduce pressure buildup by allowing water to seep through fissures in the canyon walls on either side of the dam. Electric lines extend upward from the blockish power plant, soaring out of the canyon through a series of transmission towers that send carbon-free energy to the Black Hills, Burbank and beyond."
