Tag Archive for: Lake Mead

‘Unrecognizable.’ Lake Mead, a Lifeline for Water in Los Angeles and the West, Tips Toward Crisis

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jaweed Kaleem, Thomas Curwen

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.”

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Colorado River System Poised for First Ever Official Shortages

/in , /by /FOX 13 Salt Lake Cityby Max Roth

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.

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A Massive Water Recycling Proposal Could Help Ease Drought

/in , , /by /WIREDby Matt Simon

LAKE MEAD, WHICH provides water for 25 million people in the American West, has shrunk to 36 percent of its capacity. One rural California community has run out of water entirely after its well broke in early June. Fields are sitting fallow, as farmers sell their water allotments instead of growing crops, putting the nation’s food supply in peril.

As the West withers under extreme drought, legislators in the US House of Representatives have introduced HR 4099, a bill that would direct the Secretary of the Interior to create a program to fund $750 million worth of water recycling projects in the 17 western states through the year 2027.

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Authors Say Plan For the Worst on Colorado River

/in , , /by /KUNMby Megan Kamerick

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.

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Opinion: No, L.A. is Not a Desert. But We are Getting There

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times by The Times Editorial Board

One of the standard tropes we hear from outsiders about Los Angeles is that it is located in a desert — a dry biome that cannot sustain our millions of people without importing water from somewhere (and someone) else.

And the standard retort from folks like us on the Los Angeles Times editorial board is that, no, it’s explicitly not a desert. To get to the desert, we have to leave town. The difference in climate, flora and terrain between L.A. and, say, Palm Springs or Las Vegas is profound. Deserts get less than 10 inches of rain a year. Las Vegas gets just over four. Los Angeles gets nearly 15.

We’re not a desert. We have a Mediterranean climate, like, say, the South of France. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

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Tribe Becomes Key Water Player with Drought Aid to Arizona

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Felicia Fonseca

For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado River’s natural flooding patterns to farm. Later, it hand-dug ditches and canals to route water to fields.

Now, gravity sends the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding the fields.

Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help weather a historic drought in the American West. The reservoir serves as a barometer for how much water Arizona and other states will get under plans to protect the river serving 40 million people.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes and another tribe in Arizona played an outsized role in the drought contingency plans that had the state voluntarily give up water. As Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the future of water.

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Proposed Federal Grant Program Could Bolster Lake Mead Water Levels

/in , , , /by /Las Vegas Review-Journal by Blake Apgar

Water officials in Las Vegas are backing a federal bill that could help pay for a California project that would leave more water in Lake Mead.

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Opinion: Is it Time to Start Thinking About the Worst-Case Scenario on Lake Mead?

/in , , /by /Arizona Republicby Joanna Allhands

It seemed like Colorado River basin states were ahead of the curve in 2007 when we enacted a 20-year set of guidelines that spelled out what would happen if Lake Mead were to ever fall into a shortage.

But a decade later, as water levels at the lake plummeted, it was clear that we hadn’t planned nearly enough for shortage. A “stress test” that better accounted for more recent drought conditions revealed that if we didn’t do more to prop up water levels, there was an unacceptably high chance of the lake tanking within a few years.

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Another Dry Year on the Colorado River Could Force States, Feds Back to Negotiating Table

/in , , /by /KUNCby Luke Runyon

Colorado River water managers could be pulled back to the negotiating table as soon as next year to keep its biggest reservoirs from declining further.

The 2019 Drought Contingency Plan was meant to give the U.S. and Mexican states that depend on the river a roadmap to manage water shortages. That plan requires the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead, to drop to unprecedented levels before conservation among all the lower basin states — Arizona, Nevada and California — becomes mandatory. California isn’t required to conserve water in the reservoir until it drops to an elevation of 1,045 feet above sea level.

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Here Are Some Things to Know About the Extreme Drought in the Western U.S.

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Celina Tebor

Almost half of the U.S. has been in a drought since the start of 2021.

Compounding factors, including low rainfall and snowpack, climate change and persisting droughts from previous years, have escalated into extreme dryness.

The prolonged dryness means low water levels are endangering fish species in Oregon and Colorado, 30% of California’s population is in a drought emergency, and the nation’s two biggest reservoirs on the Colorado River — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are two-thirds empty.

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