The Water Information Program

The Grand Canyon boasts new sandbars ranging in size from small nooks and crannies to ones as large as football fields, the results of a manmade flood designed to nourish the ecosystem of the Colorado River, an official said. "On a couple of big sandbars there were already beaver tracks, bighorn sheep tracks," Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin said. "You could see the animals already exploring new aspects of the old canyon." The three-day flood last week was designed to redistribute and add sediment to the 277-mile river in the Grand Canyon, where the ecosystem was forever changed by the construction of a dam more than four decades ago. The sediment provides a habitat for plants and animals, builds beaches for campers and river runners and helps protect archaeological sites from erosion and weathering. But since 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam just south of the Arizona-Utah state line has blocked the sediment from the Colorado downstream, turning the once muddy and warm river into a cool, clear environment that helped speed the extinction of four fish species and push two others near the edge. 

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