I've wondered what John Wesley Powell would think of the dam, and the lake named after him.
This hits at the nub of the issue. As Wallace Stegner notes over and over and over in his excellent biography of Powell (Beyond the 100th Meridian), Powell realized early that the West was a) dry, b) would not support dry farming for long, given the tendency towards drought and c) water needed to be preserved carefully in the West. Powell is an interesting figure, well worth of reading his biography, even if he is largely ignored now. I highly recommend this book, as well as David Weber, for anyone interested in water issues in the Western US.