Back in June, when Grant and the others had flown back from Mexico into the United States, without the environmentalist, and had told their story to the authorities, federal charges were filed against Grant for illegal pursuit across international borders, illegal border crossing, and even abetting a felon. Although all charges were eventually dropped, Roland and the Bureau of Reclamation had placed Grant on disciplinary suspension while they conducted their own internal investigation. To add insult to injury, the Bureau had filed a restraining order against Grant preventing him from approaching within ten miles of any dam or edifice controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation.
As part of the suspension, Grant had been warned not to talk to any media representatives, or he would be immediately terminated and his pension would be forfeited. Although Grant had thought the treatment was unfair, he had tolerated it, thinking that eventually the truth would be known. However, when the Bureau publicly blamed Grant for the failures of Head Gate Rock, Palo Verde, and Imperial Dams, Grant had heard enough. In mid July, he agreed to a series of interviews on television to clear his name. He told the truth, including the Bureau's lack of support for Hoover-Two, which experts agreed had saved Hoover, Davis, and Parker Dams. Governor Rally Jenkins of Nevada appeared on Larry King Live and backed up Grant's story. The Bureau of Reclamation fired Grant in retaliation. Grant reported his treatment on national news. The public believed Grant. A media circus followed, and editorials around the country screamed for the government to throttle management at the Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau became a public example of big bad government. A week later, Roland Blackwell resigned, saying that he wanted to spend more time with his family. The next day, Grant was reinstated at the Bureau, and the President of the United States flew to Colorado and held a press conference, publicly thanking him for his heroic efforts at Hoover and the other dams downstream. The helicopter flight into Mexico was never mentioned.
No, Grant and Commissioner Blackwell would never be friends.
After dinner in St. George, Grant and Fred retired to separate rooms of a small motel on St. George Blvd. They awoke early, ate a quick breakfast, then drove toward Lake Powell. They talked continuously and marveled at how the country had reacted to the bombings.
After the dust settled in late June, the environmentalists went crazy. There were parades in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. T-shirts were sold by the thousands. Many showed a picture of the Glen Canyon Dam being blown up by a mushroom cloud of fire. The Los Angeles Times and other prominent newspapers across the country showed a front-page color shot of some pelicans swimming in the restored Colorado River Delta in Mexico. Environmentalists dominated TV talk shows and speculated how fast the delta would recover. They hypothesized how many birds would return, and guessed at how many fish would nest in the delta next year and the year after. There were environmental theories in abundance and the media seemed willing to oblige them all.
By the fourth of July, a rumor took hold that the bomber had survived. Many claimed to have seen him. Some said he was short, some tall, but all described him as a skinny guy with a limp from his broken leg, both of which had been reported in the news. Some said that he was living in Mexico, but the majority opinion had him moving to Oregon where he was preparing to single-handedly do something to stop deforestation.
For the first few days after the incident, helicopters had flown grid patterns over the Gulf of California searching for his body. They found the four-wheeler, but not the environmentalist. The missing body fueled the rumors that he was still alive, but Grant didn't believe it.
By early July, the FBI had raided the RV storage facility in Page and confiscated the first white pickup. They had already retrieved the second truck, parked just off the highway in Mexico. From the two vehicles, they figured out the bomber's identity, which led them to cell phone records of the phones used to detonate Glen Canyon, credit card receipts for food and gas on the bomber's route, and a rundown house in East Las Vegas with traces of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the back yard. They also found some unused homemade detonators in one of the kitchen cabinets. The license plate on a motorcycle parked in the garage matched one that passed through a roadblock in Utah the morning of the first bombing. They released the name of the bomber (more commonly referred to in the media as the environmentalist) as Jeffrey Calhoun, an electronics technician employed by a large lighting contractor in Las Vegas. Co-workers described him as a social recluse with no close friends, but very smart, especially with electronic devices. Neighbors described him as private. Most of his acquaintances were aware of his environmental concerns, and in fact many considered him fanatical. An elderly woman next door said that Calhoun refused to water his lawn, eventually converting the landscaping to cactus, and encouraged her to do the same. She refused, however, maintaining a healthy green lawn, which had seemed to irritate Calhoun.
At the public release of the perpetrator's identity, the environmental community vacillated back and forth on whether to embrace or vilify him. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Glen Canyon Institute all confirmed he had once been a paid member of their organizations, but that his memberships had lapsed. Greenpeace, in a widely attended and televised ceremony, announced an honorary lifetime achievement award to Jeffrey Calhoun and installed him into their hall of fame for positive environmental actions. The Sierra Club, on the other hand, tried to distance itself from him, claiming that they believed Calhoun was not the perpetrator, but had been framed by a right-wing conspiracy cooked up by the federal government. They had no explanation for why Calhoun had not been seen since those two days in June.
As Grant and Fred started getting closer to Lake Powell, Grant started to feel giddy. He knew that seeing the remnants of the dam would bring back strong emotions. The image he saw when the Gulfstream had flown over the dam back in June, where a huge column of water sprayed out of the face of the dam, would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Fred interrupted Grant's thoughts. "Look at that," he said, pointing up ahead. "I thought they weren't going to tell anybody about this."
Grant saw a bunch of cars parked off both sides of the road. "They weren't," he agreed. "There must've been a leak."
When Fred reached the other cars, he had to weave through them like a gauntlet. The crowd converged on the car and yelled. What they were saying was impossible to decipher. One girl held a sign that said "DON'T DROWN GLEN CANYON AGAIN. LET IT LIVE." Grant noticed that a couple of the vehicles were Volkswagen buses. He wondered what was up with environmentalists and the Volkswagen bus. How could someone claim to care about the environment then drive a car that belched out blue smoke?
After passing through the protestors, Fred stopped at a police roadblock. While a policeman checked Fred and Grant's credentials and marked their names off a list on his clipboard, Grant looked back at the group. Among the waving signs, he saw a small girl, who couldn't have been older than ten, waving a sign that said, "DAMN THE DAMS."
The policeman waved them through.
"Wow," Fred said. "They must think something's up."
In the days following the bombings, environmentalism had reigned. The media was flooded with calls for legislation to assure that none of the dams on the Colorado be rebuilt, and that the delta be guaranteed an allocation of water for fishery and waterfowl habitat restoration. Public opinion, at least temporarily, seemed to support the environmentalists. The Democrats in the House of Representatives wrote a bill that would permanently outlaw any repair or rebuilding of Glen Canyon, Head Gate Rock, Palo Verde, or Imperial Dams. Additionally, they suggested that the United States immediately negotiate a treaty with Mexico, prohibiting Mexico from rebuilding the Morales Dam. The legislation would essentially leave Hoover as the only major dam on the Colorado. Initially unnoticed, deep inside the bill, was buried text that would have prevented repair of the California Aqueduct.