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. The loss of generation from the lake would deprive the grid of about a quarter million households worth of power. This is prompting a lot of people to ask whats going to happen next. So the question is, how bad is it going to get? JOHN DANKOSKY: So obviously, people are preparing for worse times. And as we warm even further, it makes it that much harder for our infrastructure, our water storage, to recover. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. "It would kill 50 to 60% of the businesses in town," said Franz. You would have to go back to April of 1937, also twoyears into its initial filling, to find levels that low. The nation's second-largest reservoir is under pressure from climate change and steady demand, and is now . Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. It sucks up moisture from forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". 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. The vast stripe rimming Powell is a testament to how far its level has dropped since 2000, when the Colorado's flows began a steady decline in response to persistent drought, warming temperatures. Water levels dipped below 3,525 feet the last major milestone before a serious threat to hydropower generation at the Glen Canyon Dam. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Newsweek previously reported that Lake Mead's dead pool level is 895 feet, while Lake Powell's is 3,370. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. They've been ignoring the problem coming for decades and decades. Its been a vital force for the intermountain West because of its ability to store vast amounts of water and generate electricity for farmers, cities and towns in 13 states. Glen Canyon Dam in Lake Powell near Page, Arizona on July 4, 2010. What happens if Lake Powell runs out of water? And what does that mean for the users on the river? This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. Pause your chores until you have a full-load for the dishwasher. 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. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. Definitions explained. The year as I write is now 2018. Back-to-back dry years years with below-average runoff have left little water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, a reservoir upstream. 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. California broke from six other Western states in proposal to cut Colorado River use as water levels reach historic lows. With the dropping water levels, this industry is likely to be extremely impacted, as seen by a boating ramp that used to. However, he said the biggest impact will be the water. Newsweek reached out to the Central Arizona Project for comment. Levels on Lake Powell, which stores water for the. 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. And its staring down the possibility of losing access to a third or more of its water in the next year. 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. We are likely witnessing the end of Lake Powell as we knew it in the 80s and 90s, Balken said. Together, these reservoirs, fed by the mighty Colorado River, provide the water 40million Americans depend on. It is forecast to have a new record low next summer, saidHasencamp. JOHN DANKOSKY: Local science stories of national significance. Those are Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Utah. LUKE RUNYON: Yeah, and this is a question that has been of intense interest to climate scientists. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoirs generating capacity, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent. Lakes in the Colorado River Basin are drying up and losing water, with severe water cuts now expected across four states - the start of a water crisis in the West. University of California professor Jay Lund previously told Newsweek that the cuts already implemented aren't enough, and in order to give the reservoirs ample time to recover through rain and snowpack melt, people will need to reduce their consumption even more. More. VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. Hes a reporter at KUNC, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. She compares the current drought conditions to 2018, another record-breaking hot and dry year just a couple years ago. Credit: Alex Hager. Big Water, Utah It's hard to believe a place as beautiful as Lake Powell is also a shadow of its former self. At its highest, in 1983, the lake was 3,708 feet above sea level. Newsweek previously. At the same time,demand has risen due to increased population growth in the West. At 3,490 feet, Glen Canyon Dam reaches "minimum power pool." The word unprecedented gets thrown around a lot in discussions about the Colorado River these days, and this is no exception. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. 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. It wascreated by blocking the Colorado River atGlen Canyon in southern Utah and northernArizona. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. 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. So, what would happen if Lake Powell dried up? Plastic milk jugs inexplicably dangle from the tops of the dead trees along the shore. 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. 1. This is very unpredictable and these are going to be difficult conversations in the coming years.. Are experts looking at this saying, its just going to get worse in the Colorado River basin? Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. But it plays a huge role in the Colorado River basin. And this is just the beginning of what. Officials managing the effort say computer models show that taking these steps would reduce the risk of catastrophically low levels to near zero. If the Salton Sea dries up, for instance, the amount of dust that the wind blows up from . Air entering the system would also damage the generators. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. 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 Mead's water level on Wednesday was measured at 1,044.03 feet, its lowest elevation since the lake was filled in the 1930s. It will be painful but it doesn't mean the area can't thrive. Lake Powell is in crisis. The latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show there's a. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. VigLink sets this cookie to show users relevant advertisements and also limit the number of adverts that are shown to them. The Colorado isn't running low on information about water supplies. The southwestern US has been dealing with drought conditions for years, and thats had a big impact on the Colorado River basin. It can hold 9.3 trillion gallons of water at its peak and reach an elevation of 1,220 feet above sea level. 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 . Such is the nature of the climate change beast that we have unleashed.. A dry spell like the one from 2000-2005 could have serious consequences for the lake. 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. Balken surmises the jugs were tied to the trees back when Lake Powell just covered their upper branches to warn boaters of the hazard beneath the surface. 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. A years worth of rain and snow is missing from Utahs ground. JOHN DANKOSKY: So you know, with so many stories like this, we say, this is probably due to climate change. As Lake Mead outside Las Vegas and Lake Powell in Utah decline, certain policies are triggered into action. Lake Powell hasn't been this low since June of 1965, just two years after it began to fill with water. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. All signs point to a hotter, drier future for the Western U.S. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. The lake avoided serious problems during the drought because, in 1999, it was almost full. This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. Okay. 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.. LUKE RUNYON: Well, this is kind of a narrative or storyline in the basin that has gotten a lot more attention recently, is how have tribal users been excluded from agreements in the past? The finding is ominous for the region's future drinking-water supply. 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. In case of a drought like that of 2000-2005, Lake Mead would get 7.48 million acre-feet, worsening the structural deficit that is already causing Mead to drop by up to 12 feet a year due to the Lower Basin states chronic overuse of river water compared to supply. In those cases, what's revealed is the dry and dusty lake-bedwhich can be a problem in its own right. Glen Canyon Dam can release water below minimum power pool through bypass jets until an elevation of 3,370 feet, which is then the top of dead pool and no further water can be released. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. "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. We don't know if we can release water to meet downstream requirements. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. Throughout the history of the American West, water issues have shown their ability to both unite and divide communities. Lake Powell (credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) The power pool mark is 3,490 feet of elevation. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Tony graduated from Northwestern University and started at the Star in 1997. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. 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. 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. 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. Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. 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. Without wet hydrology to replenish the reservoirs, the basin finds itself in an all but certain shortage condition for the first time." . A drying climate and withering heat in recent years have pummeled the region: water cuts to farmers, dry wells, mass fish and bird die-offs, and depleted reservoirs that have decimated hydropower output. 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. The U.S. Department of the Interior is considering a plan to keep extra water in Lake Powell. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. Dead pool is 3,370 feet. If the water levels drop to levels below the intake pipes, the water flow will cease to turn the hydroelectric turbines, and the dam won't generate any power. 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. Copyright 2021 Science Friday Initiative. Those cutbacks are likely to grow steeper in 2021. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 40 fun events happening in Tucson this weekend Feb. 23-26 , Opinion: Help protect Lake Mead and Colorado River water, Colorado River runoff forecast keeps dropping, Warm weather reducing Colorado River runoff, study finds, Feds back off from Lake Mead water demand, Businesses, residents paid to save water in this Arizona valley, Tucson to leave nearly 20% of its CAP water in Lake Mead, 'Toilet to tap' water treatment will soon be legal in Arizona, officials say, Big snowstorms put Colorado River drought plan on ice, Colorado River tops group's 'endangered' list again, CAP-California water deal that Arizona nixed provokes ongoing conflict, Water bailout? 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. Luke, well continue to follow your reporting. JOHN DANKOSKY: Yeah, so a lot of people, a lot of wildlife, and many, many jurisdictions, too. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". I would say less than 20 percent, Ostler said. By the end of the summer, its projected to be even lower, at 29% of its capacity, which is a record low. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. The answer is almost certainly, no, we're not at the bottom of impacts, said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. The level has risen over the winter months due to rainfall and particularly cold weather to hit parts of the U.S. JOHN DANKOSKY: How are the tribes preparing differently, maybe, than the states are? "That means that due to climate change, it is more likely that we will see [more] extreme heat waves". 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