Lake Mead, the lifeblood of the West, is at an all-time low.
And just this week, officials said it will fall by one-third of its current level by the end of 2023.
Inch by inch, the lake is falling. We’re seeing incredible images of sunken boats now visible.
The megadrought gripping the Western United States is widening.
Fifty-seven percent of the country and 100% of Nevada is in some level of drought, and nowhere is it as obvious as along the Colorado River.
In the Southwestern U.S., the massive Lake Mead Reservoir near Las Vegas is not as massive as it used to be. The water level has dropped to near-record-low levels.
A few hundred miles away from Las Vegas, what’s happening at a prototype wastewater purification plant in Southern California may increase our water supply here.
“We are designing the project to ultimately connect to what will likely be two of our water drinking facilities,” says Deven Upadhyay, the Chief Operating Officer and Assistant General Manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, that region’s equivalent to our Southern Nevada Water Authority. The Metropolitan Water District is the wholesale water provider to 26 California member agencies that service 19 million people.
A Southern Nevada water board approved a pair of resolutions Monday that seek to scale back future water consumption to accommodate population growth over the next several decades.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority board of directors approved one resolution to ban the installation of grass in new developments and another that supports a moratorium on the use of thirsty cooling units for new buildings.
The river that supplies water to about 40 million people is getting worryingly dry. Since the federal government officially declared a water shortage this summer, the Colorado River has been thrust into national headlines, and so have the scientists and decision makers who track and shape its future.
In response to worsening drought conditions, the board of Southern California’s regional water wholesaler and other water agencies across the Southwest have announced a partnership with the federal government to fund a short-term agricultural land fallowing program in California that will conserve water on a large scale.
The partnership among the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Central Arizona Project, Southern Nevada Water Authority, and the Palo Verde Irrigation District is expected to help conserve up to 180,000 acre-feet of water over the next three years, amounting to about a 3-feet increase in Lake Mead’s water level.
Someone drinking a glass of water in Las Vegas might one day owe a thanks to wastewater in California.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has offered to put $750 million into a $3.4 billion water treatment plant proposed for Southern California. In return, Nevada would be able to boost its yearly draw from Lake Mead by an additional 10 percent.
The new plant would produce cleaner water than current treatment facilities, allowing water agencies to wring more use from the Colorado River.
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.
Some big moves are coming from the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The water company wants all “unused turf” (grass) in the Las Vegas valley remove
The agency sent the following tweet expressing the legislation it would like to see proposed on Monday night.
After three decades of water wars in Southern California, policy experts hope a new era in collaborative management will offer inspiration for the ongoing and complex negotiations over Colorado River allocations amid a historic and deepening drought.
“Those lessons need to catapult us forward,” said Patricia Mulroy, former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, during the fall meeting for the Association of California Water Agencies in December. “These states, these constituencies, these communities cannot afford for these discussions to crater. Failure is not an option.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
