This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. 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. 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. Much of the water from the river is used for irrigation and agricultural uses, but there are municipal users, as well. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. JOHN DANKOSKY: When you use the term megadrought, that sounds like a newer term. Is this as bad as climate change is going to get in shrinking the snowpacks in the headwaters? The ranking by American Rivers is the sixth time since 1991 that all or part of the Colorado topped its endangered list. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. Northern Arizonas Glen Canyon Dam, which creates the lake, has a full capacity of 1,320 megawatts, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". According to the National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow areas and becoming more concentrated. "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. Its companion reservoir, Lake Mead, is at levels almost as low. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. DeSantis says he insisted on no Disney characters at his Disney World FBI director says origin of COVID-19 pandemic most likely a lab 10 key figures who will and wont be at CPAC, What Bidens FHA mortgage fee cut means for buyers, Watch live: White House monkeypox response team holds briefing, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. "Its hard to overstate how important the Colorado River is to the entire American southwest.. 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 . A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. First of all Lake Powell is not gonna dry up. 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. The dam stopped up the Colorado River, creating Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir in the United States. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. John Dankosky works with the radio team to create our weekly show, and is helping to build our State of Science Reporting Network. 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 . After seeing 30 inches of rain in one day in Louisiana, 20 inches in Houston, unprecedented drought in California over the last 5 years, not to mention the flow reductions in Colorado River, Udall said, I think we need to seriously consider water-related climatic events that have no historical precedent.. And it would increase the likelihood of cutbacks in river water deliveries to Arizona, in particular. Lake Powell is in crisis. If its dry there, that means many more problems as the water flows downstream. On top of the hydropower the lake generates, its the source of drinking water for the 7,500 residents of Page, Az., and the 1,443 members of the LeChee chapter of the Navajo Nation. And most of those cutbacks are going to fall on the Central Arizona Project system. Since Lake Powell is primarily sandstone, the lake actually leaks water into the porous rocks. Now what? If the lakes levels drop below 3,490, Hawes added, the Bureau of Reclamation will have to run water through a series of river outlet tubes, the lowest delivery mechanism in the lake, for the first time since the 1980s, and bureau officials dont actually know if they can handle that much water, she said. The first warning sign would come if a drought pushed the lake below 3,525 feet, almost 85 feet below where it is now. Alex is KUNC's reporter covering the Colorado River Basin. Theyre roughly 25% full now, saidBrad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. You cant go into a drought like that today if its half full. Its also headed toward a record low later this year. As of August 10, water levels were measured to be 3,534.51 feet above sea level. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. So the question is, how bad is it going to get? Federal and state officials have committed to a more inclusive process that integrates the needs of tribes, environmental and recreation groups, and Mexico. The year as I write is now 2018. It's partly that there's less rain and snow, partly that as temperatures rise, plants use more water and more water evaporates out of the soil which would otherwise have ended up in the river. 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This Statista chart shows the share of the continental United States' area under different levels of drought between 2018 and 2022. Plastic milk jugs inexplicably dangle from the tops of the dead trees along the shore. JOHN DANKOSKY: This is Science Friday. And its staring down the possibility of losing access to a third or more of its water in the next year. 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. Without wet hydrology to replenish the reservoirs, the basin finds itself in an all but certain shortage condition for the first time." . YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. This cookie is native to PHP applications. But the warming temperatures that were seeing make it considerably worse than it would have been. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". We called several of them and asked for discrete numbers that capture the current state of the Colorado River basin. And really, what were seeing in the basin is that warming of just a couple degrees has the potential to completely upend how the water cycle functions in the Southwest. Just as water demand is going up, the supply is going down. Broadly speaking, dropping levels have created a lot of unanswered questions about the future. Water management requires planning for the future. 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. Those cutbacks are likely to grow steeper in 2021. 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. ET: The dead pool level of Lake Powell has been corrected. 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. Asthe latest round of federal forecastsfor the rivers flow shows, its plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year. Lakes Mead and Powell. What to know about the West's ongoing water crisis: Lake Powell is the nation's second-largestreservoir. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Nearly all of Utah, New Mexico, . This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. If water levels at Lake Powell drop just another 32 feet, those generators will stop spinning. It can hold 9.3 trillion gallons of water at its peak and reach an elevation of 1,220 feet above sea level. The level has risen over the winter months due to rainfall and particularly cold weather to hit parts of the U.S. At the same time,demand has risen due to increased population growth in the West. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. However, he said the biggest impact will be the water. But there is still this fundamental supply-demand imbalance in the Colorado River basin. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. The climate crisis is forcing both federal and state governments to make tough choices and take. The lake was just under 24 percent full as of. For context, on the scale of no drought to worst drought, theres no category that captures conditions more dry than exceptional. At the time of publication, Lake Powell was sitting at only 3,529 feet only four feet above this important threshold. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. It does not store any personal data. Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River, Arizona. And by themselves they are no longer sufficient to meet the area needs. 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. The Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell and the Hoover Dam forms Lake Mead. JOHN DANKOSKY: So obviously, people are preparing for worse times. 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. Officials say the lowest level at which Glen Canyon Dam can . VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. Throughout the history of the American West, water issues have shown their ability to both unite and divide communities. The third would transfer some water stored in the smaller Upper Basin reservoirs to Lake Powell. It's been a vital force for the intermountain West because of its ability to. Build our State of the continental United States ' area under different of. Will stop spinning biggest impact will be the water means many more problems as the water from the is... Level at which Glen Canyon Dam can feet above this important threshold and 2022 and 2022 grow. 'S reporter covering the Colorado River Basin 's second-largestreservoir unique session ID for the cookies the... To build our State of the dead trees along the shore feet below the first shortage trigger elevation all part! 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