The window to avoid even more painful cuts on the Colorado River just closed.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation is asking states to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water, just to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead out of critically low territory in 2023.
And we’ll need a plan to do so by mid-August when shortage levels and other important operating details for the next water year are set.
June 14, 2022 – Sandra L. Kerl, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, issued the following statement on U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton’s testimony today before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the severity of the drought on the Colorado River and need for near- and long-term innovation and investment:
“The water situation across the state and Southwest is dire, as historically dry conditions exacerbated by climate change shrink water storage levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell and threaten the loss of power generation. One look at the river system today communicates as no words can, how devastating these impacts are and the need for all parties – the seven Basin states, federal government, tribal nations and our neighbor to the south, Mexico – to make the kind of changes needed to ensure that this precious resource will be available for future generations.
“Two decades ago, after experiencing severe drought and shortages in our own local water supplies, the Water Authority Board of Directors and San Diego County ratepayers made the difficult decision to simultaneously invest in the largest water conservation program in the West, while reducing per capita local water consumption by more than 40%. It hasn’t been easy, but the fruits of our labor have been realized by dramatic increases in efficiency in agricultural production in Imperial County and by securing a highly reliable water supply for San Diego County. Importantly, land was not fallowed, people did not lose their jobs and all environmental impacts were fully accounted for.
“San Diego’s water conservation agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District was made possible by legislation passed decades ago in Sacramento that can be a model for how to sustain environmental, agricultural, and urban water needs while using significantly less water. Under the leadership of Governor Newsom and with Adel Hagekhalil now at the helm of the Metropolitan Water District, the state and all Southern California are poised for innovation and to build on this successful model.
“Our public policy must be focused first on making conservation and reclamation work, and on recognizing that that it will cost money. We cannot succeed with policies that unintentionally fail to connect the benefits of conservation to the ratepayers who foot the bill.
“The Water Authority is fully committed to working together with all parties to promote innovation and to the long-term sustainability of our most precious resource, and to protecting the human right to water. Our collective success is vital to our communities, farms, environment and the economy.”
— Sandra L. Kerl, General Manager, San Diego County Water Authority
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.
In late April 1996, Lake Powell sat at an elevation of 3,673 feet — just 27 feet below its maximum capacity. At that time of plenty, Arizona lawmakers worried that the state wasn’t using its full share of Colorado River water.
Instead of potentially ceding those flows to California, the state opened a kind of liquid piggy bank, storing away a share of its water for an uncertain future.
The water crisis in Arizona affects all of us. From our tap water to our crops, even our electricity.
The supply is running short, so FOX 10’s Steve Nielsen headed to Lake Powell to investigate our ongoing water crisis and uncover what’s being done to safeguard our most important resource in the desert.
One hundred years after a landmark agreement divided the waters of the Colorado River among Western states, the pact is now showing its age as a hotter and drier climate has shrunk the river.
The flow of the Colorado has declined nearly 20% since 2000. Reservoirs have dropped to record low levels.
A large provider of Colorado energy says sagging hydropower production on the Colorado River system, which has raised concern over the long-term reliability of the power source in the West, has not had a significant impact here.
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the largest hydropower customer on the Colorado River system, has received about two-thirds of its normal hydro supply this year. But only 8% of Tri-State’s total energy comes from the Colorado River Storage Project, known as CRSP, and so the reduction only accounts for about 3% of its total system, according to figures the company provided.
The Colorado River is in crisis — one deepening by the day.
It is a powerhouse: a 1,450-mile waterway that stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million people in seven U.S. states, 30 federally recognized tribes and Mexico. It hydrates 5 million acres of agricultural land and provides critical habitat for rare fish, birds and plants.
Water is flowing through two of three hydropower turbines in a blockish building at the base of Flaming Gorge Dam, so I can feel the floor buzzing — vibrations pulsating through my body — as Billy Elbrock leads me past the blue-and-yellow Westinghouse generators. The warehouse-like space is adorned with an American flag, and with the 1965 logo of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Spring snowmelt likely won’t deliver the big water supply bump the drought-stricken Colorado River and its reservoirs need, data from the latest federal river forecast shows.
The May to July season is a crucial time for the river, which is replenished by snowmelt running off the mountains on the Western Slope, and the system is in need of a major moisture boost amid a 20-year drought fueled by climate change.
