The Colorado River is tapped out.
Another dry year has left the watershed that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest parched. A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time, a shortage is expected to be declared by the federal government this summer.
Californians once greeted hot summers by blasting the air conditioners and filling the pool. No longer.
Battered by drought and heat waves that are straining the power grid, the Golden State is asking residents to make do with less water and electricity, just when they really want to use both. It’s an uncomfortable new normal for a state that used to celebrate summer.
Ablunt new report based on June runoff conditions from the Colorado River into Lake Powell and Lake Mead shows the reservoirs fast deteriorating toward “dead pool” status, where stored water is so low it can’t spin the massive hydroelectric power generators buried in the dams, and large swaths of Arizona farmland going fallow.
Eric Richins looked out from his pontoon boat to the shallows on the lake’s western edge. He squinted and paused as if he had come upon a foreign shore. For the first time in a career navigating the waters of the American West, he didn’t know where he was.
“I could have sworn I was here just six weeks ago catching smallmouth and bigmouth bass,” said the 35-year-old fisherman who runs tours on this 247-square-mile basin where the Colorado River meets the Hoover Dam to form the nation’s largest reservoir.
He pointed ahead to what looked like dozens of tiny steps made from successive layers of dried mud now covered in tall grass and weeds — the effect of rapidly creeping vegetation over a shoreline that has been dropping by nearly a foot a week.
“Now it looks like a lawn. I knew the drought was bad. I didn’t realize it was this bad,” he said. “This place is unrecognizable.”
Someone drinking a glass of water in Las Vegas might one day owe a thanks to wastewater in California.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has offered to put $750 million into a $3.4 billion water treatment plant proposed for Southern California. In return, Nevada would be able to boost its yearly draw from Lake Mead by an additional 10 percent.
The new plant would produce cleaner water than current treatment facilities, allowing water agencies to wring more use from the Colorado River.
An area in Hemet offers a spot for people to get a little relief from triple-digit heat by cruising in their boats around a giant body of water.
However, Diamond Valley Lake also plays an important role when it comes to Southern California’s water supply. It is especially vital because Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked Californians to cut their water usage by 15% as the state drought continues to intensify.
In Cantua, a small town deep within California’s farming heartland, the heat had always been a part of life. “We can do nothing against it,” said Julia Mendoza, who’s lived in this town for 27 years. But lately, she says, the searing temperatures are almost unlivable.
By midday on Thursday, the first day of a protracted, extreme heatwave in California’s Central Valley, the country roads were sizzling with heat. A young volunteer with a local environmental justice non-profit who had come to check in on the neighborhood collapsed on the sidewalk, her face bright red and damp. Construction crews working nearby quickly swept her into an air-conditioned car and handed her a cold bottle of water.
Lawmakers in Congress on Friday introduced a bill that would pump tens of billions of dollars into fixing and upgrading the country’s dams.
The Twenty-First Century Dams Act, introduced by Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire, proposes to spend nearly $26 billion to make the repairs that would enhance safety and increase the power generation capacity of the country’s 90,000 dams. It also calls for removing any dams that have outlived their usefulness.
A California water myth which becomes especially pernicious in droughts is that California is “running out of water” (Hanak et al. 2009). Viewing California’s supply and demand pressures in terms of fixed water requirements perpetuates this myth and invariably places undue attention on building additional supply infrastructure. Instead, managing water as a scarce resource suggests a balanced portfolio of water trading, investments in conveyance, smart groundwater replenishment, and demand management. With such a balanced portfolio, 1) California’s water supply situation is not broadly dire, and 2) California’s vast and interconnected water infrastructure and groundwater resources can minimize most problems from the state’s highly variable climate.
In the face of rapidly worsening drought conditions this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom urged all Californians to voluntarily cut their water usage by 15% — but what exactly does that mean for the average California household?
The governor made his plea Thursday as he extended a regional state of drought emergency to 50 counties, comprising about 42% of the state’s population. For many, the talk of water reductions reminded them of the shriveled lawns, attenuated showers and water-bucket toilet flushing of the last devastating drought.
It also prompted some to wonder just how much more water Californians can conserve, since they continue to use substantially less water than they did before the 2012-2016 drought.
