And youre able to say, oh, the rivers high, or the river is low. Lake Powell has been called "Jewel of the Colorado" by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. Lake Powell, the country's second-largest reservoir and a key source of water and power for much of the West, is more parched than ever.Earlier this month, the lake dropped below 25% capacity . For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages athttp://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/. Kuhns analysis is the worst case, said Pat Tyrrell, Wyoming state engineer who has been involved in the Upper Basin water talks. During those 25 years, the rivers annual flow averaged 13.2 million acre feet a bit less than what the Bureau of Reclamations studies have predicted it would carry by 2050 thanks to warming weather and other climate changes, Ostler noted. Because the deficit is so substantial, Meyer said its very likely the watershed will see drought conditions persist in 2021. Scientists say the current status of Lake Mead is a stark illustration of climate change and a megadrought that could be the worst in the U.S. West in 1,200 years . And that sponge is very dry right now, and its sucking up all of that water before it can be used as water supply. And it takes several years of good weather in order to bring the system out of drought. It wascreated by blocking the Colorado River atGlen Canyon in southern Utah and northernArizona. More than four scientific studieshave pinned a large part of the decline on human climate change. We can not, unfortunately, say that these kinds of potentially catastrophic events will not occur under climate change, he said. Having a reliable Lake Powell to back up Lake Mead is crucial especially during a period of uncertainty, Lower Basin users say. I mean, what sort of disputes are coming to the forefront because of this? These ICS uses, at the high end, amount to two and a half feet of elevation in Lake Mead. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Alex is KUNC's reporter covering the Colorado River Basin. Frankel criticizes water managers for their inaction in the face of those trends. 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 . More. Its not quite as bad as 2002, she said, but it could easily get there. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. 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. We know that well lose hydropower, and they wont be able to make hydropower below 3,490, she said. In coming years, it's going to get worse and worse and worse.. Lake Powell is a few hundred feet above dead-pool level. Udall questioned the validity of using the years before 2000 because the years 1990 to 1999 were very wet and not representative of the weather we see now. Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. You cant do that with groundwater. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 This website uses cookies to improve your experience. The reservoir is integrating all the problems we have, all the challenges we face show up in that one number, in that one place, he said. Copyright 2021 Science Friday Initiative. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. Lake Powell is supposed to buffer water supply during times of drought [and] it is not performing that function now. Institute Executive Director Eric Balken said taking such a step would better position stakeholders to address the drought on their own terms rather than simply running out. And it doesnt allow ratepayers who rely on power production from the canyon to be forward-thinking and operate under conditions of certainty., Cities, farmers and fish all need certainty when it comes to water, and this is the opposite of certainty, Hawes said. 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. Throughout the history of the American West, water issues have shown their ability to both unite and divide communities. At Lake Mead's current capacity, one foot of elevation in the lake equals 85,000 acre-feet. AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. Those are Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah. What to know about the West's ongoing water crisis: Lake Powell is the nation's second-largestreservoir. 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. "Based on the best climate data that's available, it's really unlikely that this reservoir is going to be around in the decades to come," Eric Balken of the Glen Canyon Institute told 12News. The Glen Canyon Dam, D'deest'in Htsaa, marks where the water level in Lake Powell on the Colorado River, reaches. According to nonprofit news organization CalMatters, California, which receives the most water from the river at 4.4 million acre-feetmore than one-third of the river's supplyhas not yet been impacted by the cuts. And by themselves they are no longer sufficient to meet the area needs. The second-largest man-made reservoir in the country has dropped to unthinkable lows amid the West's climate change-driven megadrought. "Arizona is, to a greater or lesser degree, selling water to California," CAP attorney said of the later-killed deal. . Dead pool is 3,370 feet. Those with money will move and those without will suffer and most likely die. Big Water, Utah It's hard to believe a place as beautiful as Lake Powell is also a shadow of its former self. A drastic drought could bring shortages of one to 1.5 million acre feet, he said. Meanwhile, Lake Powells projected decline in 2021 recently triggered the Upper Basin plan to be used for the first time. 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. Its also in the groundwater, something that you cant see. If levels dropped below 3,490 feet, there wouldnt be enough water flowing through Glen Canyon Dams turbines to generate power. In the long term, probably not. Luke, well continue to follow your reporting. This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. The Colorado River systems reservoirs combined arecurrently less than half full. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. Lake Powell is the town's lifeline. Experts say it wont be a silver bullet, but could stave off near-term danger. Forecasts are calling for 4.1 million acre-feet of water to flow into Lake Powell from April to July this year, but water managers are obligated to release more than 7 million acre-feet out of the lake. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoirs generating capacity, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent. The first warning sign would come if a drought pushed the lake below 3,525 feet, almost 85 feet below where it is now. 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. 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. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. It is forecast to have a new record low next summer, saidHasencamp. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. The challenges are really hard, Fleck said. Broadly speaking, dropping levels have created a lot of unanswered questions about the future. Because of that, its expected that the Department of the Interior'sBureau of Reclamation, which oversees water management, will mandate onesometime next year. Weve seen declines in snowpack at the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. How does climate change affect you? Even hardy desert plants, the ones well-adapted to water scarcity, have struggled. Powell is not drying out in a vacuum.. If the reservoirs reach dead-pool levels, more than a million people using the electricity could be required to find new power sources. What would constitute that? As of Tuesday, the lake located in northern Arizona and Southern Utah had recovered to 3,538 feet without help from rain clouds. The nations second-largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are slipping dangerously low. House Democrat nods to Kellyanne Conway in push to make Hatch Act violations a Hemorrhaging losses, the Feds problems are now the taxpayers, Lukashenko arrives in Beijing as concerns rise around China-Russia relations. Lake Powell is in crisis. They both use water from the Colorado River. The Upper Colorado Commissions computer models have shown that if the Upper Basin states take the precautionary measures theyre talking about, the risk of Powell falling to dangerously low levels is near zero even if the basin gets another 25 years of weather like it did from 1988 through 2012, said Don Ostler, executive director the Upper Colorado River Commission. And how can certain policy agreements, policy negotiations, be structured in order to allow tribal nations to come to the table and negotiate for future policies? Despite the storms that brought heavy rain and snow to California and other Western states in January, experts say it would take years of such weather to replenish the West's water resources. Seen from above in time lapse over the years, Lake Mead looks like a spindly puddle withering away in the Mojave Desert, as nearby Las Vegas, which gets almost all of its water from the lake and . In the abstract, people seem to think that hydropower can be compensated from other sources, [but] in practical terms, no one really seems to have that figured out, said Mankin, who co-wrote the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Drought Task Forces annual report in 2021. At 3,490 feet, Glen Canyon Dam reaches "minimum power pool." The repercussions of a draining water supply are immense -- farms are drying up, a once-thriving marina now sits more than a mile from lake water and Arizona's Department of Water Resources is . So Im guessing over the next several years, as policies are negotiated, youre going to hear a lot more about how tribes are being involved in that process. Every other state in the watershed had one of its top five driest years on record. 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. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. At its height, the lake surface sits over 1,200 feet (365 meters) above sea level. The dropping water and the reservoirs expanding bathtub rings are also tied to policy. For context, on the scale of no drought to worst drought, theres no category that captures conditions more dry than exceptional. While levels are on a long downward trend, they fluctuate with the seasons. Water levels have been getting lower and lower, and for the first time ever, a shortage seems almost certain. Weve seen evaporation increase from reservoirs and streams at higher temperatures. Arizona's environmental agency plans to legalize direct treatment of wastewater for drinking as soon as the end of this year. Luke Runyon is the water reporter at KUNC in Greeley, Colorado. Arizona, which receives 36 percent of its water supply from the river, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, has been hit hardest by the cuts. An official shortage declaration from the federal government could come as early as this year, as Lake Mead is currently projected to be below 1,075 feet in elevation at the end of 2021. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. And there is some evidence that this dry period would have happened without our greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that they're becoming involved in this manner points to real concerns that they must have and they must view the situation as one of extreme difficulty that requires them to act more directly. And its easy to put them off if you get a wet year. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. Air entering the system would also damage the generators. What are the effects of climate change? This is prompting a lot of people to ask whats going to happen next. LUKE RUNYON: Well, Arizona is in the line for the steepest cuts from the Colorado River. And you know, those are cutbacks that users are actually going to feel and that municipal leaders, farmers, tribal users in Arizona are having to plan for right now. That year is the deadline for water users to negotiate a new set of managing guidelines for the Colorado River. The Lower Basins legal share is 7.5 million acre feet a year. The new studys analysis is consistent with the studies and analyses CAP has been doing and is part of the reason its been focusing on trying to protect Lake Mead, Cullom said. Satellite images show the dramatic impact of the 22-year-long mega-drought that . But the last time it was anywhere close to that level was 1999. That deficit could easily put us below power pool within a year, just as a back of the envelope calculation, said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. If that does come to pass, Tyrell said he is fairly confident we can deal with worst case scenario if it ever happens.. Future conservation efforts are highly uncertain. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. The basin is made up of portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. Things will have to change in how we do business.. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. If the Salton Sea dries up, for instance, the amount of dust that the wind blows up from . If Lake Powell recedes much further, one of the nation's largest reservoirs could be at risk of no longer generating hydropower for the region. The lake was just under 24 percent full as of last week, and had lost 16 feet in the last year. 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 . But it plays a huge role in the Colorado River basin. 2002, 2018 and 2021 are the most intense dry periods on record for the basin. JOHN DANKOSKY: Luke Runyon is a reporter based at KUNC in Fort Collins, Colorado. As of Thursday, Lake Mead was at 1,045.79 feet. Climate scientists call it D4. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The district entered 2021 with a record 3.2 million acre-feet of water storage saved up, including 1.3 million acre-feet in Lake Mead. The Lower Basin states of Arizona and Nevada have begun to see their deliveries from the river curtailed. I havent shown the climate change hydrology because it just scares everybody, Kuhn told his districts governing board in June, according to an account of the meeting published in the Aspen Daily News. According to the National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow areas and becoming more concentrated. At 3,370 feet, the reservoir hits. I'm not sure a lot of Las Vega. LUKE RUNYON: Yeah, and this is a question that has been of intense interest to climate scientists. The Bureau's projections show a 3% chance that Lake Powell's water levels fall below the minimum level necessary for the lake's Glen Canyon Dam to generate hydroelectricity next year. And thats really what were watching right now, is how low is Lake Mead going to go? "This is apparently a decent (water) year, but still, if it turns dry again there are some pretty big reductions on tap and every state could be affected," saidHasencamp. All signs point to a hotter, drier future for the Western U.S. Such is the nature of the climate change beast that we have unleashed.. The big question is how water managers will divvy up a shrinking supply to feed a growing region. At full capacity, Lake Powell holds enough water to flood the entire state of Kentucky a foot deep. Depending on how you define "dry up." It's doubtful that all 1,450 miles of the Colorado River will turn to dust, even if we drain Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation's two largest. The southwestern states have been gripped by drought for over 22 years, experts say. LUKE RUNYON: So in the Colorado River basin, a lot of the management of the river is tied to the level of its two largest reservoirs. "I've been here since 2007 and obviously this is way lower than I've ever seen it.". The river carried an average of 14.7 million acre feet from 1906 through 2015. Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. The state already is on the edge of shortages for its $4 billion Central Arizona Project. If water levels at Lake Powell drop just another 32 feet, those generators will stop spinning. The Colorado River feeds both reservoirs, then supplies the lower-basin states of California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico with water. Lake Powell hasn't been this low since June of 1965, just two years after it began to fill with water. And thats Lake Powell in southern Utah and Lake Mead, which is on the Nevada-Arizona border near Las Vegas. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. What is the long-term future of Lake Powell? Lake Powell has been called Jewel of the Colorado by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. As Lake Mead outside Las Vegas and Lake Powell in Utah decline, certain policies are triggered into action. They are trying to negotiate a three-state deal that would reduce water deliveries even further, he said. This is very unpredictable and these are going to be difficult conversations in the coming years.. But Lake Powell's current water level is the lowest since it was first filled almost 60 years ago. Lake Mead's level is 1,047 feet above sea level. The water level decline . This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. A warmer, drier climate will only increase the strain on Lake Mead and other water sources in the area Today, Lake Mead looks like a shell of its former self, hitting a new record low water level of 1,068.08 feet above sea level, according to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The water levels in Lake Powell are dramatically lower than they were in 2021, which in turn were lower than they were in 2020. : luke Runyon: well, Arizona is, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent and. 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