Lake Mead the largest reservoir in the Colorado River Basin is losing water at record speeds, dropping . The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The dryness is currently off the charts in parts of the watershed. Even lower, at 3,370 feet, the reservoir hits "dead pool," at which point water can no longer pass through the dam by the power of gravity. Brad Udall, a water researcher at Colorado State University whos not involved with the contingency plan, is less optimistic. They've been ignoring the problem coming for decades and decades. This is the highest percentage of land in the rivers Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the regions driest year on record. Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that 3,490 feet is Lake Powell's "dead pool" level. So Im guessing over the next several years, as policies are negotiated, youre going to hear a lot more about how tribes are being involved in that process. If its dry there, that means many more problems as the water flows downstream. JOHN DANKOSKY: So obviously, people are preparing for worse times. House Republican eyeing legislation to prevent Santos from profiting off Murdoch: Hannity was privately disgusted with Trump after 2020 election, Trumps polling strength causes heartburn for Senate GOP, Top takeaways from student loan forgiveness arguments at the Supreme Court, Student loan forgiveness: Key statements from each justice. And youre able to say, oh, the rivers high, or the river is low. The story has been updated to reflect this information. Colorado River tribes pose statewide leasing idea, Risks to Lake Mead, Colorado River intensifying greatly, federal officials say, Arizona basketball | Tommy Lloyd on the wild, fun nature of college hoops | Feb. 28, 2023, Millions at Risk of Slipping Into Poverty as COVID-Era SNAP Benefits Set to End, More than 300 words have been added to the English dictionary. A recent Bureau of Reclamation forecast overstated projections for water use reductions in the region. Lake Powell is the town's lifeline. During the 2000-2005 drought, Lake Powell lost 13 million acre-feet of water and dropped almost 100 feet. Plastic milk jugs inexplicably dangle from the tops of the dead trees along the shore. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Udall questioned the validity of using the years before 2000 because the years 1990 to 1999 were very wet and not representative of the weather we see now. An official shortage declaration from the federal government could come as early as this year, as Lake Mead is currently projected to be below 1,075 feet in elevation at the end of 2021. He says such measures can help, for sure. As part of 2019s Drought Contingency Plan, water managers agreed that the reservoirs water should be kept above 3,525 feet to provide a buffer before it got even lower, giving the agencies in charge some time to come up with a fix. These ICS uses, at the high end, amount to two and a half feet of elevation in Lake Mead. The southwestern states have been gripped by drought for over 22 years, experts say. At the time of publication, Lake Powell was sitting at only 3,529 feet only four feet above this important threshold. For the Upper Basin states, the reservoir storage has ensured theyll be able to meet their legal requirement under the 1922 Colorado River Compact to deliver 75 million acre feet to the Lower Basin every 10 years. Earlier this year, the Bureau of Reclamation released about 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming to Lake Powell, increasing its elevation about 16 feet. The water in Lake Powell is low because the amount of water in the Colorado River has been falling for decades. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. The fact that they're becoming involved in this manner points to real concerns that they must have and they must view the situation as one of extreme difficulty that requires them to act more directly. The water level on Lake Powell is 100 feet from its high mark in August 2013. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. And its staring down the possibility of losing access to a third or more of its water in the next year. : Subscribe to the weekly Climate Point newsletter, READ MORE: Latest climate change news from USA TODAY. First of all Lake Powell is not gonna dry up. The second would step up cloud-seeding programs to try to boost snowfall in the region. It sucks up moisture from forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity. As snowpack runoff disappeared into dry ground instead of hitting the reservoirs, engineers calculated a 79% chance Lake Powell will fall below its minimum target water height of 3,525 feet above sea level next year. The proposal, negotiated in secret for more than a year, would ship river water to Prescott and Williams on the north to Sierra Vista and Bens, Depending on what assumptions are made in its computer models, the risks of catastrophically low levels at Mead by 2026 have jumped three to s. Lake Mead's water level on Wednesday was measured at 1,044.03 feet, its lowest elevation since the lake was filled in the 1930s. what little rain and snow has fallen dries . Below that is deadpool level, which is where no water flows out of the lake at all, which according to Gus Levy of the Bureau of Reclamation, may cause the Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado River to run dry, reports 12News ABC. That could cripple the ability of the Colorado Rivers four Upper Basin states to deliver river water to the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, as theyre legally obligated to do. The combined reservoirs in Utah are below 50% full. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. The Hoover Dam is therefore also at risk of declining hydroelectric power generation as Lake Mead approaches deadpool levels. It will be painful but it doesn't mean the area can't thrive. And thats left Lake Powell at 34% of its capacity. The second largest reservoir in the U.S. by total capacity after Lake Mead, Lake Powell spans the Utah/Arizona border, and is an artificial lake created from damming the Colorado River. This Statista chart shows the share of the continental United States' area under different levels of drought between 2018 and 2022. 84% Of Upper Basin In Extreme To Exceptional Drought This is the highest percentage of land in the river's Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the region's driest year on record. The historic megadrought that is squeezing some Western states water supplies will also likely start showing up in energy bills, because those dams cant produce as much electricity. . Since Lake Powell is primarily sandstone, the lake actually leaks water into the porous rocks. This cookie is native to PHP applications. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. We don't know if the dam will operate as expected. Stock image of Alstrom Point, Lake Powell. We don't know if we can release water to meet downstream requirements. The cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. Those cutbacks are likely to grow steeper in 2021. The nations second-largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are slipping dangerously low. Welcome back to Science Friday, Luke. Every year, it stores water that flows downstream from the four Upper Basin states. The dropping water and the reservoirs expanding bathtub rings are also tied to policy. Lake Powell hasn't been this low since June of 1965, just two years after it began to fill with water. But even some creosote is dying, unable to take the one-two punch of both the hottest and driest conditions on record last year in parts of Arizona. This is very unpredictable and these are going to be difficult conversations in the coming years.. Together, these reservoirs, fed by the mighty Colorado River, provide the water 40million Americans depend on. The Colorado River cuts through dry land that was once covered by Lake Powell on September 7, 2022, near Hite, Utah. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Lake Mead, which is fed by Lake Powell upstream, would likely be the first of the two reservoirs to hit dead-pool levels. The river basin is governed bya centuries-old agreement that allocates more water than flows through the river, and the federal Bureau of Reclamation has called on states to reduce water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet. Alex is KUNC's reporter covering the Colorado River Basin. Water levels have been getting lower and lower, and for the first time ever, a shortage seems almost certain. The Lower Basin states of Arizona and Nevada have begun to see their deliveries from the river curtailed. Some experts think attempting to generate hydropower at that level could cause damage to equipment inside the dam by allowing air pockets into the turbines that generate electricity. And Lake Mead is currently at 37% capacity. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, for water. And its easy to put them off if you get a wet year. And this is just the beginning of what. While levels are on a long downward trend, they fluctuate with the seasons. According to nonprofit news organization CalMatters, California, which receives the most water from the river at 4.4 million acre-feetmore than one-third of the river's supplyhas not yet been impacted by the cuts. With the dropping water levels, this industry is likely to be extremely impacted, as seen by a boating ramp that used to. 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YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. The water levels in Lake Powell are dramatically lower than they were in 2021, which in turn were lower than they were in 2020. Lake Powell is a few hundred feet above dead-pool level. I havent shown the climate change hydrology because it just scares everybody, Kuhn told his districts governing board in June, according to an account of the meeting published in the Aspen Daily News. "Its unfortunate that thelargely natural occurrence of a drought has coincided with this increasing warming due to greenhouse gases," said Flavio Lehner, aprofessor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University. People should definitely not feel like the agencies managing the Colorado River have it under control, he said. The water levels behind the Colorado Rivers biggest dams are fast-approaching or already at record lows. The dam stopped up the Colorado River, creating Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir in the United States. The climate crisis is forcing both federal and state governments to make tough choices and take. Asthe latest round of federal forecastsfor the rivers flow shows, its plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. House Democrat nods to Kellyanne Conway in push to make Hatch Act violations a Hemorrhaging losses, the Feds problems are now the taxpayers, Lukashenko arrives in Beijing as concerns rise around China-Russia relations. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Nearly all of Utah, New Mexico, . water level is too low to flow downstream, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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