Posts

Lake Powell Drops to a New Record Low as Feds Scramble to Prop It Up

/in , , /by /KUNCby Alex Hager

Water levels in Lake Powell dropped to a new record low on Tuesday. The nation’s second-largest reservoir is under pressure from climate change and steady demand, and is now the lowest it’s been since it was first filled in the 1960s.

Water levels fell to 3,522.16 feet above sea level, just below the previous record set in April 2022. The reservoir is currently about 22% full, and is expected to keep declining until around May, when mountain snowmelt will rush into the streams that flow downstream to Powell.

Full Story

Wet Winter Won’t Fix Colorado River Woes

/in , , /by /Yale Climate Connectionsby Bob Henson

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.

Full Story

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.

Full Story

Federal Government Rolls Out ‘Extraordinary Actions’ to Prop Up Lake Powell

/in , , /by /KUNCby Alex Hager

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.

Full Story