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Lake Mead Nears Dead Pool Status as Water Levels Hit Another Historic Low

/in , , /by /NBC Newsby Denise Chow

Lake Mead’s water levels this week dropped to historic lows, bringing the nation’s largest reservoir less than 150 feet away from “dead pool” — when the reservoir is so low that water cannot flow downstream from the dam.

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. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet — a possibility still years away — Lake Mead would reach dead pool, carrying enormous consequences for millions of people across Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico.

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Opinion: Why Is Almost No One Planning for a Future Without the Colorado River?

/in , /by /AZ Centralby Joanna Allhands

You’d think that, given how dangerously low Lake Mead is getting, we’d have a good idea of what life might look like without that water.

Yet few major players are modeling for a future without Colorado River water – or even a future in which we are asked to live on markedly less of it.

Ironically, the deeper the lake plunges, the more reluctant water managers seem to be about fleshing out the worst-case scenario.

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How Stable Is San Diego’s Supply of Colorado River Water?

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

It’s no secret that San Diego County’s top water managers are deeply frustrated with California’s new conservation rules, even as drought continues to ravage the American Southwest.

The San Diego County Water Authority, the region’s wholesaler, has repeatedly lobbied the state for an exemption to prohibitions on watering commercial and other landscapes that go into effect this month.

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Las Vegas Turns on Low-level Lake Mead Pumps Designed to Avoid a ‘Day Zero’

/in , /by /The Nevada Independent by Daniel Rothberg

The country’s largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead, has dropped to such a historically low level that Las Vegas water officials have completed the process of turning on a pump station that will allow Southern Nevada to retrieve water, even under extreme conditions.

The move — to turn on the pump station full bore — is an indication of how low Lake Mead has fallen over the past decade and serves as a bulwark against the possibility of Las Vegas losing physical access to its water as regional issues on the Colorado River become increasingly dire.

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Scientists See Silver Lining in Fed’s Efforts at Lake Powell

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Joan Meiners

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced last week that it plans to adjust management protocols for the Colorado River in early 2022 to reduce monthly releases from Lake Powell in an effort to keep the reservoir from dropping farther below 2021′s historic lows.

As of Jan. 6, the nation’s second-largest reservoir — part of a Colorado River system that provides drinking water to approximately 40 million people throughout the West — sat at an elevation of 3,536 feet, the Spectrum reported.

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