Lake Powell will soon hit its lowest level since Glen Canyon Dam started trapping the Colorado River’s water in 1963 — even with emergency releases of water from reservoirs upstream. The Bureau of Reclamation announced Thursday that the lake elevation will soon drop below 3,555.1 feet above sea level, the record set in 2005, back near the start of a 20-year dry cycle plaguing the Colorado River Basin.
Water conservation is a way of life in the San Diego region, whether during drought periods or wet years. While the region is in drought like much of the Southwest U.S., San Diego County is not experiencing a water shortage. That’s because the Helix Water District, and the other water utilities serving the region, have worked together for 25 years to conserve water and invest in new water resources.
The San Diego County Water Authority, its 24 member agencies, and the water ratepayers of San Diego County, have made investments to increase water supply reliability.
June 2021 was the hottest June on record in the U.S.
Map from InciWeb
Map from Cal Matters
San Diego County Water Authority board meeting photo from Water News Network
Water efficient landscaping at The Water Conservation Garden
Colorado River photo from KUER Public Radio
In 2014, the Water Authority completed the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant to turn Pacific Ocean water into drinking water. It’s the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere. Now, we’re focused on turning recycled water into drinking water by using reverse osmosis, just like at the Carlsbad plant, and other advanced water treatment technology.
Helix is working with Padre Dam Municipal Water District, the city of El Cajon and the county of San Diego on the East County Advanced Water Purification Program, and the cities of San Diego and Oceanside are developing “Pure Water” programs.
Reverse osmosis cannisters at the Carlsbad Desalination Plant. Photo from Poseidon Water
San Vicente Dam photo from the San Diego County Water Authority
(Editor’s note: The Helix Water District is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies that deliver water across the metropolitan San Diego region.)
This is escalating quickly.
The July 24-month study for the Colorado River reservoir system is skirting dangerously close to what might be considered a doomsday provision within the Drought Contingency Plan.
If Lake Mead is projected to fall below 1,030 feet any time within two years, the plan states, Arizona, California and Nevada must reconvene to decide what additional steps they will take to keep Mead from falling below 1,020 feet – an elevation that many consider the crash point. The next milestone below that is “dead pool,” where no water leaves the lake.
With the concrete towers of Hoover Dam in the background and the depleted waters of the nation’s largest reservoir below, an unlikely group of allies — conservation activists, businesspeople and officials representing cities and farming communities — on Thursday called for halting all plans that would take more water from the shrinking Colorado River.
The 10 people who spoke at the news conference said they’re part of a new coalition demanding a moratorium on new dams and proposed pipelines, including a proposal to transport Colorado River water to sustain urban growth in Utah.
High up on Colorado’s Independence Pass, a narrow, winding road weaves through the evergreens and across mountain streams, up and over the Continental Divide at more than 10,000 feet. At one point that road crosses a canal.
It’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, but that canal is part of water infrastructure that makes life on Colorado’s Front Range possible.
The state has a geographical mismatch between where water shows up and where much of the population has settled.
A group that included environmentalists, elected leaders and officials from business and agriculture gathered Thursday morning to put forth a slate of demands for a new approach to managing the Colorado River.
“We’re here to say, ‘Damn the status quo. No more business as usual,’ ” Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, said from a makeshift lectern in a parking lot just above the Hoover Dam.
Management of the river, which feeds Lake Mead and serves 40 million people in seven states and Mexico, has failed and the approach must be revised, Roerink said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for all Californians to reduce their water use by 15 percent amid a severe drought across most of the state won’t be met with the same urgency in San Diego County as elsewhere because of a decades-old effort to diversify water supplies here and because of a new court order.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declined a legal challenge by Imperial Valley farmers that had the potential to threaten the San Diego County Water Authority’s access to Colorado River supplies. This is why San Diego County is being asked to conserve but is not one of 50 counties in the state subject to Newsom’s stricter drought decrees.
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.”
States relying on the Colorado River system for much of their water are bracing for declarations of shortage soon.
Such a declaration would be unprecedented. It would mandate steps to store water in Lake Powell from smaller reservoirs upstream, like Utah’s Flaming Gorge, that have more robust levels.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released a 24-month projection for Lake Powell in the spring showing they expect the lake to drop below 3,525 feet around March of 2022.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people around the West, including New Mexico, but the historic drought gripping our region has prompted a 20% drop in flows in the river. Reservoirs are drying, with Lake Mead at its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s. As scientists incorporate these changes into future projections, an article in Science magazine urges them to plan for even greater declines in the river.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
