If the Colorado River were a bank account, it would be running toward the red.
The river, the lifeblood for several Western states, is being squeezed by overuse and plunging supply — as temperatures stay on the upswing year after year, and thirsty soils rapidly absorb the bulk of moisture from a dwindling annual snowpack.
The conclusion is “inescapable,” Colorado River District Manager Andy Mueller said Monday.
The “bathtub ring” at Lake Mead has become a familiar sight. The water level in the lake is the lowest it has been since the Hoover Dam, which created the lake, was built in the 1930s. Those low levels have been decades in the making.
“Back in around 2000, Lake Mead was pretty close to being full, but over the last 20 years-plus now we’ve just not had good hydrologic conditions. It will take years to recover from that, years of good conditions and unfortunately the climate models and projections don’t predict us getting cooler and they don’t predict us, let’s say, getting wetter,” said Dr. Sharon Megdal, University of Arizona professor and former board member for the Central Arizona Project.
Water levels at Lake Powell have dropped to their lowest level since the huge reservoir was filled more than 50 years ago, another sign of the ongoing drought’s toll on the Colorado River. The reservoir fell to 3,555.09 feet above sea level Friday and continued to drop through the weekend, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. As of late Sunday, water levels stood at 3,554.72 feet. The previous low mark, set in 2005, was 3,555.10 feet. Friday’s low water mark comes barely a month after Lake Mead, the largest reservoir on the river, reached a record low. Federal officials are expected next month to declare a water shortage on the Colorado River, triggering cutbacks next year in Arizona and Nevada.
Lake Mead is a water lifeline for Southern California and much of the west, but now it’s facing its first water shortage in its 85-year history.
The lake along the Nevada-Arizona border is one of the largest engineered lakes in the world, and it’s drying up at an alarming rate.
L.A. Times national correspondent Jaweed Kaleem talked about what this means for millions of people and millions of acres of farmland across the west.
A southern Utah city plans to pull additional water from the Colorado River, but the move amid a historic drought has left some concerned. A 140-mile pipeline approved by the Utah Legislature would serve St. George, a fast-growing city of nearly 90,000 people — up from fewer than 75,000 a decade ago. A new “straw” into the river would increase demand on the Colorado River system, even as federal officials deal with a shrinking Lake Powell, which would be the source of the pipeline.
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.
The growing crisis on the Colorado River came into sharper focus last week when the Bureau of Reclamation began emergency releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to shore up Lake Powell’s declining levels, now at historic lows.
The move will bolster Powell’s level by 3 feet in hopes of preventing it from dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electrical power, according to the agency’s Upper Colorado regional director Wayne Pullan.
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.
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.
