Today, the lake has about 13 million acre-feet left, said Eric Kuhn, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which is helping to oversee the study. According to the National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow areas and becoming more concentrated. Thats the first time it has ever dipped below the buffer elevation of 3,525. But the warming temperatures that were seeing make it considerably worse than it would have been. The low levels arent just causing hand-wringing among the Wests water officials. But if the regions dry period repeats itself, he said, youll need fundamental change. His uncle, Stewart Udall, voted to create Lake Powell as an Arizona congressman in 1956 and shepherded construction of the Glen Canyon Dam that holds back the lake while he was interior secretary in the early 1960s. 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 cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The water levels behind the Colorado Rivers biggest dams are fast-approaching or already at record lows. Its not quite as bad as 2002, she said, but it could easily get there. The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. Share on Facebook; . These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. As of Thursday, Lake Mead was at 1,045.79 feet. 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 . Down the Colorado River lies Lake Mead, which is also seeing lower water levels than ever before. Hes also been a long-time guest host on Science Friday. "Climate change makes these extreme weather events both more frequent and more severe, '' Matthew Casale, Environment Campaigns Director at non-profit advocacy group PIRG, previously told Newsweek. 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. Understanding and explaining the depth of the dryness is up to climate scientists throughout the basin. Because the deficit is so substantial, Meyer said its very likely the watershed will see drought conditions persist in 2021. Because of that, its expected that the Department of the Interior'sBureau of Reclamation, which oversees water management, will mandate onesometime next year. And it takes several years of good weather in order to bring the system out of drought. More than four scientific studieshave pinned a large part of the decline on human climate change. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Is this as bad as climate change is going to get in shrinking the snowpacks in the headwaters? The nation's second-largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are slipping dangerously low. What is the current status of Lake Powell? Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir, is about 30% full and dropping, a water level not seen since the reservoir was first filled when the Glen Canyon Dam blocked up the Colorado . That deficit is about the same amount of precipitation that falls across Utah in an entire year. The basin is made up of portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. Drought Conditions Affect Two-Thirds of the U.S. Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. The Nature Conservancy receives some funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which also provides funding to KUNC for reporting on the Colorado River. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. The story has been updated to reflect this information. As Lake Mead outside Las Vegas and Lake Powell in Utah decline, certain policies are triggered into action. By the end of the summer, its projected to be even lower, at 29% of its capacity, which is a record low. Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir and one that provides water and power to millions of people in southern California, has reached its lowest levels since its first filling in. Below 3,490 feet of elevation, Lake Powell dips into a zone where the generation of hydropower by water flowing through the Glen Canyon Dam becomes unreliable. The lake avoided serious problems during the drought because, in 1999, it was almost full. Lake Powell is hemmed by the Glen Canyon Dam, which generates hydroelectric power via the dam's water flowing through the dam back into the Colorado River. Broadly speaking, dropping levels have created a lot of unanswered questions about the future. If allocations from the Colorado River dip below the levels necessary for some customers to receive hydropower, the real question [becomes] what can our grid accommodate from a hydropower perspective in terms of compensating production losses from Glen Canyon? said Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College. "The West might look different," said Hasencamp. It doesnt matter if we get an incredible snowpack, our soils are so depleted right now that thats not going to really translate to water coming down through the river systems, Meyer said. Having a reliable Lake Powell to back up Lake Mead is crucial especially during a period of uncertainty, Lower Basin users say. 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. JOHN DANKOSKY: So its not just the reservoirs, though, where you see these dramatic pictures of just how low the water is. Secondly, Phoenix does not get it's water from Lake Powell. Before that, he covered the worlds largest sockeye salmon fishery for KDLG in Dillingham, Alaska. Explain that a little bit for us, Luke, and just how dire the situation is for the groundwater in the region. 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. Why is Lake Mead drying up? But after more than two decades of drought it is now less than 1,050 feet the lowest since the lake was filled, and falling about a foot a week. And Lake Mead is currently at 37% capacity. Given todays changing climate, led by continued warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, any knowledge we have of the past that historically would help us make predictions does not help us any more, Udall said. 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. In an emergency request issued in June 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation urged states relying on the Colorado River basin to reduce their water usage by between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet over the next 18 months. Newsweek reached out to the Central Arizona Project for comment. Welcome back to Science Friday, Luke. It took 16 years for it to fill. "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. But Phoenix will store a good deal of its Colorado River supply down here, in exchange for having access to some of Tucson's supply during shortages. 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. 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. 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. So when Lake Mead declines, certain policy triggers are put in place. The study is aimed, in part, at trying to help guide efforts at devising a contingency plan, to keep things from getting out of hand, Kuhn said. What happens if Lake Powell runs out of water? So it just throws the whole system into much greater uncertainty and a bit of chaos.. But even some creosote is dying, unable to take the one-two punch of both the hottest and driest conditions on record last year in parts of Arizona. BACKGROUND: Western water crisis looms as California complicates critical water deal. In the desert of California lies another manmade lake condemned to death, the Salton Sea. 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. Even though conditions may be evolving and getting even worse, we dont really have a way to depict that, because D4, thats that ceiling, she said. We don't know what happens below 3,490, said Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director at the Nature Conservancy. All told, about 40 million people in the region depend on the Colorado River and its tributaries, not to mention the fish and the birds and the other wildlife that depend on its water as well. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. The dam stopped up the Colorado River, creating Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir in the United States. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoirs generating capacity, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent. At 3,370 feet, the reservoir hits. Lake Powell generates power for about 5.8 million households and businesses in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The shoreline it creates, in a red rock desert, is longer than the entire U.S. West Coast.. That includes releases of water upstream of Lake Powell, and voluntary cuts in Powells downstream neighbor, Lake Mead. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. Water managers in the four Upper Basin states and the federal government are expected to start monthly planning calls this year to consider options for propping up the reservoir if needed. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. As water levels fall in the reservoirs and river, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has implemented a tiered shortage system to reduce the allocated amount certain regions in the lower basin receive from the river to preserve water. Correction 01/16/23 10:56 a.m. Powell is not drying out in a vacuum.. And its easy to put them off if you get a wet year. Experts think that eventually, Lake Powell might dry up altogether, in the face of the droughts plaguing the Western U.S. Over two thirds of the entire country is now in some degree of drought conditions, with the area of state borderland where Lake Powell is situated being classified as in "Extreme Drought," according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. And this is just the beginning of what could happen if the lake keeps drying up. This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. It sucks up moisture from forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity. Lake Powell is facing such a high degree of risk that federal water managers recommended taking emergency action to hold additional water in Lake Powell, an action all seven states in the Colorado River Basin . 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. It is forecast to have a new record low next summer, saidHasencamp. The dropping water and the reservoirs expanding bathtub rings are also tied to policy. The historic megadrought that is squeezing some Western states water supplies will also likely start showing up in energy bills, because those dams cant produce as much electricity. And this is just the beginning of what. 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. He has mostly covered environmental stories since 2005, focusing on water supplies, climate change, the Rosemont Mine and the endangered jaguar. In the short term, yes. Officials say the lowest level at which Glen Canyon Dam can . 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. Definitions explained. Lake Powell is in crisis. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Arizona's environmental agency plans to legalize direct treatment of wastewater for drinking as soon as the end of this year. The April-July forecast for Colorado River runoff into Lake Powell is 74 percent of average. Asthe latest round of federal forecastsfor the rivers flow shows, its plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year. Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. The lake was just under 24 percent full as of. In coming years, it's going to get worse and worse and worse.. He spent two years at Aspen Public Radio, mainly reporting on the resort economy, the environment and the COVID-19 pandemic. Air entering the system would also damage the generators. But there is still this fundamental supply-demand imbalance in the Colorado River basin. 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 . At this stage a significant amount of Glen Canyon . It is not creating certainty in the water market, Mankin said. Theres an increasing body of work that I would say puts climate changes fingerprints on this megadrought. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. "Its unfortunate that thelargely natural occurrence of a drought has coincided with this increasing warming due to greenhouse gases," said Flavio Lehner, aprofessor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University. Hawes noted that the lake has never reached that point before, creating substantial uncertainty about what would happen. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. One leg would involve reducing water demand by farmers and cities in the Upper Basin. 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. This drought will only be exacerbated by climate change, as the increased global temperatures are expected to increase the severity of drought weather and frequencies of wildfires, as well as influencing a vast range of other extreme weather events. They are trying to negotiate a three-state deal that would reduce water deliveries even further, he said. And it would increase the likelihood of cutbacks in river water deliveries to Arizona, in particular. And you know, thats way beyond any sort of voluntary conservation that Arizona has done up until this point. And by themselves they are no longer sufficient to meet the area needs. Skip Navigation. A large portion of the water in the Colorado River and Lake Powell comes from high-mountain snowmelt in Colorado and Wyoming. In an average year, Lake Powell gets enough water that it can release a bit more 8.23 million acre-feet a year. Meanwhile, climate change is adding pressure to the entire river system, exacerbating existing supply and demand imbalances. And there is some evidence that this dry period would have happened without our greenhouse gas emissions. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Thats important for the entire region, Fleck said, because the backdrop of an impending crisis will set the tone for those negotiations. And as we warm even further, it makes it that much harder for our infrastructure, our water storage, to recover. According to the National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow areas and becoming more concentrated. This cookie is native to PHP applications. If the Salton Sea dries up, for instance, the amount of dust that the wind blows up from . Its impossible to even guess the odds of the Colorado Basin getting another six-year arid spell any time soon, said Udall and another longtime Colorado River researcher, Connie Woodhouse, a professor in the University of Arizonas School of Geography and Development. 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. ", States that use Colorado River Basin water mandated to cut use. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. Okay. But Lake Powell's current water level is the lowest since it was first filled almost 60 years ago. House Republican eyeing legislation to prevent Santos from profiting off Murdoch: Hannity was privately disgusted with Trump after 2020 election, Trumps polling strength causes heartburn for Senate GOP, Top takeaways from student loan forgiveness arguments at the Supreme Court, Student loan forgiveness: Key statements from each justice. At the same time,demand has risen due to increased population growth in the West. The second largest reservoir in the U.S. by total capacity after Lake Mead, Lake Powell spans the Utah/Arizona border, and is an artificial lake created from damming the Colorado River. The big question is how water managers will divvy up a shrinking supply to feed a growing region. And thats because some of these past agreements have put that state in the most vulnerable position for cutbacks. In addition to the power the lake generates directly, it is a major source of grid resilience when full, serving as a quick backup source in cases where solar or wind power cant meet demand. Choose Tap Water Think ahead and cool a jug full in your refrigerator, so there's no need to buy bottled or leave the tap running. water level is too low to flow downstream, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 84% Of Upper Basin In Extreme To Exceptional Drought This is the highest percentage of land in the river's Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the region's driest year on record. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. The regions been looking warily at the reservoirs along this long river that winds its way from Colorados Rocky Mountains all the way to Mexico, just shy of the Gulf of California. Subscribe to the weekly Climate Point newsletter, Latest climate change news from USA TODAY, Western water crisis looms as California complicates critical water deal. Creosote is one I personally like to call it the cockroach of the vegetation world because pretty much nothing kills creosote. Follow me on Substack: https://geographybygeoff.substack.com/Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geographic_geoff/Listen to the podcast: https:. The combined reservoirs in Utah are below 50% full. The dryness is currently off the charts in parts of the watershed. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Because of that, the spring and early summer will bring a temporary boost to water levels while snow runs into rivers and eventually flows into Lake Powell. 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. Falling water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell have been concerning for several years. 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. What about the idea of a water shortage? In parts of the Colorado River basin, Bolinger said climate change has caused conditions on the ground to bump up against the designated drought categories. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. 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. The Department of the Interior had asked the seven states of the Colorado River Compact to come up with a plan to cut between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water by January. Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. Meanwhile, Lake Powells projected decline in 2021 recently triggered the Upper Basin plan to be used for the first time. And thats really what were watching right now, is how low is Lake Mead going to go? Newsweek previously. 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? If the reservoir dips below 895 feet a possibility still years. Keep reading with a digital access subscription. Lake Mead's water levels were 1,047.38 feet as of February 23. How does climate change affect you? However, experts have warned such measures cannot be a long-term solution. Lake Powell has been called Jewel of the Colorado by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. What does the forecast look like? And so when you have snow thats melting off, it gets soaked up into the ground before it flows into a river or flows into a reservoir. 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. The reality is that it's probably too little, too late.. Joining me to shed a little bit more light on this is Luke Runyon. Conditions have been deteriorating across the river basin since the summer of 2020. So, what would happen if Lake Powell dried up? The water level on Lake Powell is 100 feet from its high mark in August 2013. With modest reductions in flow, they would be meaningful.. 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. The four Upper Basin states Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are devising a three-legged stool plan to protect Lake Powell. Today its about half full, Kuhn said. Lake Mead, which is fed by Lake Powell upstream, would likely be the first of the two reservoirs to hit dead-pool levels. 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. The southwestern states have been gripped by drought for over 22 years, experts say. While levels are on a long downward trend, they fluctuate with the seasons. And so this creates a lot of potential problems downstream in the Grand Canyon, it creates management problems for the reservoir itself in Glen Canyon, and most importantly, it jeopardizes the upper[Colorado River]basins ability to meet its delivery obligation downstream, Balken said. And youre able to say, oh, the rivers high, or the river is low. The Colorado River basin has experienced three D4 droughts in the last 20 years, including the current one. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide. : Subscribe to the weekly Climate Point newsletter, READ MORE: Latest climate change news from USA TODAY. 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. Lake powell has an electrical generation station there. JOHN DANKOSKY: So you know, with so many stories like this, we say, this is probably due to climate change. Lake Powell is rapidly drying up as a result of the scorching megadrought in the Western U.S., and may completely disappear in just decades. Nearly all of Utah, New Mexico, . This website uses cookies to improve your experience. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. 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. After more than 22 years of drought compounded by warmer temperatures with climate change, Lake Mead and Lake Powell have declined to their lowest levels since they were filled. The Colorado River cuts through dry land that was once covered by Lake Powell on September 7, 2022, near Hite, Utah. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages athttp://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/. Even if nothing is done, he believes the risk quite low. And thats a word that youre hearing a lot more, is megadrought, not just this temporary state of drought. 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. In the second stage of Fill Mead First, the reservoir's level would near 3,374 feet, near the river outlet works. Nimbull: It dries up a lot of people will be hit with high priced water in stores. Luke, well continue to follow your reporting. The third would transfer some water stored in the smaller Upper Basin reservoirs to Lake Powell. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. The two. Experts say it wont be a silver bullet, but could stave off near-term danger. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. "I've been here since 2007 and obviously this is way lower than I've ever seen it.". The Lower Basin states have already agreed on two short-term programs to reduce their take of water from Mead. Youre hearing a lot more now, especially because the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, is herself a member of a Native American tribe and has put a lot of emphasis on bringing tribes to the table, making tribal consultation a big part of the Biden administrations priorities. Many of the. LUKE RUNYON: Yeah, so this is something that is harder for us to visualize, because were so used to looking at reservoirs and rivers. Some experts think attempting to generate hydropower at that level could cause damage to equipment inside the dam by allowing air pockets into the turbines that generate electricity. Lake Powell (credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) The power pool mark is 3,490 feet of elevation. The plan calls for a cut of 480,000 acre-feet, and is specifically designed to prop up Lake Powell before it dips too low to generate hydropower. Water managers across the region are on the clock to come up with new rules for how to share Colorado River water before 2026, when the current guidelines expire. We are really in unprecedented territory right now, and its not even close, Meyer said. When its needed its released to Lake Mead and the three Lower Basin states. Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that 3,490 feet is Lake Powell's "dead pool" level. Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. Throughout the history of the American West, water issues have shown their ability to both unite and divide communities. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. 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. You would have to go back to April of 1937, also twoyears into its initial filling, to find levels that low. Release a bit of chaos of unanswered questions about the same time, demand has due... Filling, to recover directed to said Hasencamp height of one foot the option to opt-out these... Linkedin sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services of elevation cutbacks in River water deliveries to,... The National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow and! I would say puts climate changes fingerprints on this is probably due to increased population in! 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