The D4 category is something that is only supposed to be designated when youre seeing conditions that are so extreme theyre only happening once every 50 to once every 100 years, said Becky Bolinger, Colorados assistant state climatologist. The river is a lifeline, providing water to more than . 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. The water level on Lake Powell is 100 feet from its high mark in August 2013. We know that well lose hydropower, and they wont be able to make hydropower below 3,490, she said. Glen Canyon Dam in Lake Powell near Page, Arizona on July 4, 2010. But Lake Powell's current water level is the lowest since it was first filled almost 60 years ago. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. It took 16 years for it to fill. Such is the nature of the climate change beast that we have unleashed.. These reservoirs are as empty now as when they started filling Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, said John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexicos water resources program. In addition, the river itself experiences more evaporation. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. If the water level continues falling on its own, below minimum power pool, the dam is physically incapable of releasing a lot of water. This is the highest percentage of land in the rivers Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the regions driest year on record. What does the forecast look like? JOHN DANKOSKY: Yeah, so a lot of people, a lot of wildlife, and many, many jurisdictions, too. The water level decline . Northern Colorado Center for Investigative Reporting, Hydropower Worries Grow As Colorado River Reservoirs Keep Dropping, News brief with The Colorado Sun: The beauty and danger of skating on wild ice, LGBTQ+ youth are less likely to feel depressed with parental support, study says, 3 abortion bans in Texas leave doctors 'talking in code' to pregnant patients, Pandemic food assistance that held back hunger comes to an end. Dry conditions are the worst theyve been in almost 20 years across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the American Southwest. And its staring down the possibility of losing access to a third or more of its water in the next year. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. As Lake Mead outside Las Vegas and Lake Powell in Utah decline, certain policies are triggered into action. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide. Lake Oroville, a key component of California's water supply, also benefited from the early-winter storms, as . For those talks to start in the middle of another record-breaking dry period should make it clear to everyone involved: the future of the Colorado River is all about learning to live with less. Those with money will move and those without will suffer and most likely die. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Things will have to change in how we do business.. The Southwest United States is wrapping up an abnormally dry winter. The reality is that it's probably too little, too late.. Keep reading with a digital access subscription. Skip Navigation. On Sunday afternoon, boaters spending a day at the lake stumbled upon a barrel and were able to see that it had human remains in it, according to CNN. Copyright 2021 Science Friday Initiative. JOHN DANKOSKY: So you know, with so many stories like this, we say, this is probably due to climate change. But the warming temperatures that were seeing make it considerably worse than it would have been. Its not quite as bad as 2002, she said, but it could easily get there. Its 90% of the water supply to Las Vegas, 50% to Phoenix, effectively 100% to Tucson and 25% to Los Angeles, said Udall. Plastic milk jugs inexplicably dangle from the tops of the dead trees along the shore. The lake that once covered 400 square miles has shrunk 90 percent, leaving behind oxygen-deprived, highly salinized water with a rotten-egg odor that permeates the surrounding area. JOHN DANKOSKY: How are the tribes preparing differently, maybe, than the states are? The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". As of Thursday, Lake Mead was at 1,045.79 feet. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. For the authoritative record of Science Fridays programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 This is a 300-mile canal that runs through the deserts of Arizona to deliver water to farmers and to the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. Dead pool is 3,370 feet. Lakes Mead and Powell. And even the people who say, you know, oh, just wait for it to get wet again, know that changes have to be made because of that fundamental supply-demand imbalance. Getty Images. The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. Then after all that maybe people will start doing what they should have done years ago at least until the share holders send checks to the politicians again. But it plays a huge role in the Colorado River basin. Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that 3,490 feet is Lake Powell's "dead pool" level. As snowpack runoff disappeared into dry ground instead of hitting the reservoirs, engineers calculated a 79% chance Lake Powell will fall below its minimum target water height of 3,525 feet above sea level next year. They've been ignoring the problem coming for decades and decades. Below that is deadpool level, which is where no water flows out of the lake at all, which according to Gus Levy of the Bureau of Reclamation, may cause the Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado River to run dry, reports 12News ABC. LUKE RUNYON: Well, Arizona is in the line for the steepest cuts from the Colorado River. Lake Mead's level is 1,047 feet above sea level. The Nature Conservancy receives some funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also provides funding to KUNC for reporting on the Colorado River. And you know, thats way beyond any sort of voluntary conservation that Arizona has done up until this point. People are having to do things that you dont necessarily see, but we have water being hauled for livestock, water being hauled in for wildlife, Selover said. The low levels arent just causing hand-wringing among the Wests water officials. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. Answer (1 of 2): It has been forecast by professionals to be sometime in 2020 when action will have to be taken by the Southern NV Water District (or whatever their exact title is) to enact or enforce water conservation. Because of the record dry soils and lagging snowpack, theyrelikely headed to their lowest levelssince they were filled decades ago. A patchwork of other measures has been deployed throughout the Colorado River basin throughout the past few years, as drought and demand keep sapping reservoirs. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. For the Upper Basin states, the reservoir storage has ensured theyll be able to meet their legal requirement under the 1922 Colorado River Compact to deliver 75 million acre feet to the Lower Basin every 10 years. And data updated Monday from the California Department of Water Resources' tracker show the reservoir climbing to 60%, still below historical levels for February 72% but significantly higher than it had been. Drought Conditions Affect Two-Thirds of the U.S. Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. He spent two years at Aspen Public Radio, mainly reporting on the resort economy, the environment and the COVID-19 pandemic. Every other state in the watershed had one of its top five driest years on record. Created by Bluecadet. Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River, Arizona. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. And thats left Lake Powell at 34% of its capacity. The Santa Cruz River is now a giant bed of dust and sand. So water from the Colorado River is now pumped across the state of Arizona via the Central Arizona Project (CAP). As the drought continues and global warming evaporates water supplying the reservoirs, each reservoir isn't far from dead pool, which is when the water level is too low to flow downstream or power the turbines that provide hydroelectric power. If decision makers do nothing and take no action and just let the reservoir crash without structurally modifying the dam, there will be a lot of really big problems.. And that group includes the Navajo Nation, the Southern Ute tribe, the Quechan Indian tribe. We can not, unfortunately, say that these kinds of potentially catastrophic events will not occur under climate change, he said. On the contrary, he said, its actually become this locus of huge uncertainty, which doesnt allow downstream users to make effective plans, because they dont know what their allocations are going to be. At the same time,demand has risen due to increased population growth in the West. The April-July forecast for Colorado River runoff into Lake Powell is 74 percent of average. "That has brought everything to a head much earlier than people thought it would.". This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. . Hes a reporter at KUNC, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. The new Lake Powell study looks at the likelihood of lesser shortages in water availability for the Upper Basin as well as the possibility of the lake completely drying. Nothing physically changed at that threshold, but its the agreed-upon alarm bell for trouble in the near future. The two. "It's tough to see," Levy told 12News. In . We don't know what happens below 3,490, said Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director at the Nature Conservancy. That could cripple the ability of the Colorado Rivers four Upper Basin states to deliver river water to the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, as theyre legally obligated to do. And there is some evidence that this dry period would have happened without our greenhouse gas emissions. At that point, Upper Basin states would start delivering water from their other reservoirs to Powell. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. And thats really what were watching right now, is how low is Lake Mead going to go? A . The water in Lake Mead on Wednesday reached a new low 1070.6 feet above sea level since it was filled in the 1930's, according to data provided by the US Bureau of Reclamation. It is not creating certainty in the water market, Mankin said. A drought that has gripped the Southwest is creeping the nation's two largest reservoirs toward a dead pool, which would have catastrophic consequences for water users in the Colorado River's lower basin. At its highest, in 1983, the lake was 3,708 feet above sea level. Its lagging in both the Upper and Lower basins, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects much of the watershed totilt toward hotter and drier weatherfor the rest of the winter. So the upper watershed, you have the headwater states. In addition, Mankin said, interventions like the Flaming Gorge release treat the western U.S.s 20-year drought as a localized phenomenon rather than a regional one. The lake avoided serious problems during the drought because, in 1999, it was almost full. Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". This Statista chart shows the share of the continental United States' area under different levels of drought between 2018 and 2022. Alex is KUNC's reporter covering the Colorado River Basin. A recent Bureau of Reclamation forecast overstated projections for water use reductions in the region. Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. By January, the bureau projects water levels at Lake Mead to fall to 1,065.85 feet nine feet below the first shortage trigger elevation. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Lake Mead is projected to get down to 22 percent of its full capacity by year's end, while Lake Powell is expected to drop to 27 percent, according to estimations from the federal Bureau of . 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Colorado River tribes pose statewide leasing idea, Risks to Lake Mead, Colorado River intensifying greatly, federal officials say, Arizona basketball | Tommy Lloyd on the wild, fun nature of college hoops | Feb. 28, 2023, Millions at Risk of Slipping Into Poverty as COVID-Era SNAP Benefits Set to End, More than 300 words have been added to the English dictionary. He and his wife have four cats, thousands of bees, and a yoga studio in the sleepy Northwest hills of Connecticut. The second-largest man-made reservoir in the country has dropped to unthinkable lows amid the West's climate change-driven megadrought. Luke, well continue to follow your reporting. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. Lake Powell has many functions, one of them as a major recreation center for fishermen, houseboaters and other tourists. Satellite images show the dramatic impact of the 22-year-long mega-drought that . In those cases, what's revealed is the dry and dusty lake-bedwhich can be a problem in its own right. The bureau's report for June, added on to previously scheduled reservoir updates for January, April and August, paints a dire picture. Are experts looking at this saying, its just going to get worse in the Colorado River basin? Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. Those are Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah. Riparian rights do not entitle a water use to divert water to storage in a reservoir for use in the dry season or to use water on . In the second stage of Fill Mead First, the reservoir's level would near 3,374 feet, near the river outlet works. Okay. BACKGROUND: Western water crisis looms as California complicates critical water deal. Here are five facts about the situation at Lake Mead and what needs to be done to address the urgency of water scarcity for future generations: At full volume, Lake Mead and Lake Powell had. You have permission to edit this article. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. The Glen Canyon Institute has advocated for draining Lake Powell, both to replenish Lake Mead and to restore Glen Canyon, which was flooded to create Lake Powell. Broadly speaking, dropping levels have created a lot of unanswered questions about the future. Lake Powell has been called "Jewel of the Colorado" by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. JOHN DANKOSKY: So its not just the reservoirs, though, where you see these dramatic pictures of just how low the water is. The water in Lake Powell is low because the amount of water in the Colorado River has been falling for decades. This summer, the water. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet a possibility still years. We are likely witnessing the end of Lake Powell as we knew it in the 80s and 90s, Balken said. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Previous version of this story indicated that 3,490 feet is Lake Mead going to get worse in the country dropped. And there is some evidence that this dry period would have happened without our greenhouse emissions. Kunc 's reporter covering the Colorado River happens below 3,490, said Taylor,! Years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the Science Friday,..., we say, this is the amount of water needed to fill one of. Just going to get worse in the 80s and 90s, Balken said Science Friday is by..., this is probably due to climate change beast that we have unleashed would..... 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