Hydropower generation in the U.S. West plunged to a 22-year low last year — dropping 11 percent from the year before, according to a new federal data analysis. The total amount produced in the region amounted to 141.5 million megawatt-hours, or about 60 percent of the country’s total hydroelectricity output in the 2022-23 “water year,” per the data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Snowpack has been running well above average this winter across the Colorado River watershed. It’s a rare bright spot after 23 years of grinding megadrought brought the driest conditions in 1,200 years to the basin that supplies 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Mexico.
Should the generous rains and mountain snows continue into spring, they could help head off a deeper water crisis, including perhaps an unprecedented loss of hydropower generation from severely depleted Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced two measures today to boost water levels in Lake Powell, keeping them high enough to continue generating hydropower at the Glen Canyon Dam. Both moves are being framed as painful but necessary band-aids, cutting into reserves elsewhere in the region to stave off the worst effects of a decades-long drought that has sapped the nation’s second-largest reservoir.
One measure will send water from upstream to help refill Lake Powell. About 500,000 acre-feet of water will be released from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which straddles the border between Wyoming and Utah.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
