Fossil Creek Rising : AZ IMC

Full flows returned to Fossil Creek for the first time in nearly a century on June 18. Back-to-back celebrations took place that day—one sponsored by Arizona Public Service (APS), the utility that operated Fossil Creek’s dams, another hosted by the Center for Biological Diversity, who led the campaign to decommission the dam. Film crews captured speeches, giddy side conversations, and revelry at both events. The celebrations seemingly honored nothing more extraordinary than the flip of a switch. In truth, it was a big, joyful day for rivers.

At creekside, the play of light on water was more playful. The babble more insistent. The cool stream even more refreshing. People milled in the shade waiting for the waters to rise; they talked, laughed, and got wet.

Fossil Creek has always been special. But now everyone can see the creek in a new light, freed from the grief that seems to haunt wild places we’ve scarred.

Harnessing a river’s power

Fossil Creek flows from Fossil Springs and lushes up the desert landscapes along the Mogollon Rim just north of the rugged Mazatzals. The name comes from the heavy mineral content of its waters, which leave bony deposits in their wake. It is rare sanctuary for native fishes like the Sonoran sucker, the desert sucker, the speckled dace, the longfin dace, and the roundtail chub. Travertine pools formed along the course of this raucous stream—after rains, the surrounding desert would shudder with whitewater noise.

In 1908 and 1916, to serve the power needs of nearby boomtowns, two diversion dams began siphoning a whopping 95 percent of Fossil Creek’s waters into what were Arizona’s first hydroelectric power plants. Silenced to a whisper, Fossil Creek itself felt the thirst of the landscape in which it once thrived.

But in the West, booms quickly turn bust. By the 1990s, the plants no longer fed greedy mines and provided less than 1 percent of APS’s power supply.

A window opens

Circumstance weighed in first for APS: the cost of maintaining aging equipment for a negligible contribution towards Arizona’s electricity supply made little sense. And public pressure was mounting. An impending lawsuit compared the enormous environmental and economic costs (and paltry power benefits) of operating the plants against the benefits of letting a gem of a desert river run freely again and the reasonable one-time cost to dismantle the sites and kick off the restoration effort.

Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, took APS’s then-CEO Bill Post on a field trip to Fossil Canyon. The men share a common history growing up in Arizona and enjoying Arizona’s many splendoured wild places. They talked about legacy.

Post gave restoration the green light.

A coalition made up of natural resource agencies, university scientists, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, APS, and environmentalists (including Grand Canyon Chapter volunteers and staff ) finalized plans to decommission the dams and restore the creek’s disturbed areas.

Free-flowing once again

During the APS celebration on June 18, one could see that Fossil Creek had many soul mates. Speakers from the Yavapai-Apache Nation offered eloquent sentiments which surely informed Aldo Leopold’s philosophy and challenge— “when we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Vincent Randall, a Yavapai-Apache Nation Tribal Council member, remarked that “water is alive . . . the water has been angry because our people built the flume, the dams.

“My nephew, the holy man here, said whenever you dam up the water, you have stopped up its life, its freedom; it may flow, but it lacks vitality,” continued Randall. “Like it’s been written of biblical times, our children shall bear our sins—so we Apaches have borne this sin of damming up the water.”

“But today, I can fly,” said Randall. “I rejoice with you and let’s don’t stop here—let’s take care of our land.”

David Harbster, biology professor and environmental club advisor at Paradise Valley Community College, was moved by both the ceremony and the spirit of the day. “The release of the water offers a sense of freedom and you can never take this back,” said Harbster. “It’s a very emotional and uplifting thing to me.”

Many others welcomed Fossil Creek’s rebirth, including Tim Flood (Arizona Riparian Council), Frank Brandt (Northern Arizona Audubon Society), Pat Graham (The Nature Conservancy), Jack Davis (APS), Robin Silver (Center for Biological Diversity), and Andrew Fahlund (American Rivers).

Silver lamented that just as Fossil Creek was being celebrated, Congressman Rick Renzi was leading a sham hearing in Pinetop to trash the Endangered Species and National Environmental Policy acts. These laws are the heart, bone, and muscle of habitat protection, and would probably have ensured the success of any lawsuit to restore Fossil Creek, had that step been necessary.

“Someday our kids will look back on what we’ve done—hopefully, Fossil Creek won’t be the only stream that’s left thriving in Arizona,” said Silver. “When Bill Post stood at the overlook [on the field trip], he recognized that that might be the case.”

Now what?

Fossil Creek is a reminder in these bleak times that joy and hope are renewable. But former Congressman Sam Coppersmith, also legal counsel for the environmental coalition who fought to restore Fossil Creek, says that our follow through must be significant.

First, we need to support Senator John McCain’s bill (coming soon) and designate Wild & Scenic River status for this section of Fossil Creek. Then, agencies must get more than pocket change to manage the area.

“This is going to be a hugely dramatic and beautiful site,” says Coppersmith. “Think about how many people . . . visit Havasu Creek—a remote place experiencing extreme stresses and whose recreation must be tightly controlled—well, Fossil Creek is closer to large urban centers and easier to get to.

“The novelty and the beauty of the area will draw people; we need to make sure that doesn’t become Fossil Creek’s undoing,” continues Coppersmith. “Having said that, they’ve turned the switch, the water will be here soon—within a couple of months, based on past history, we’ll have created something new for the cover of Arizona Highways, and how cool is that?”

*This story was originally published in the Sierra Club-Grand Canyon Chapter, Canyon Echo newsletter, July-August 2005.

Robin Silver, Center for Biological Diversity, shares the story of Fossil Creek while the creek rises behind him. More than 50 people attended the celebration on June 18.

The photo was taken upstream of the
Irving plant, two weeks before the dam (flume) closure on June 3rd, 2005. There was no public access to this area the day of the closure. The water flow is much more substantial now. Note: water levels were
higher this spring due to good winter/spring rains with plenty of resulting snow melt.

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