The construction of Glen Canyon Dam in north-central Arizona also
created Lake Powell. Lake Powell serves as a holding tank for the
Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and
Wyoming.
A “Tier 1″ shortage was triggered by Lake Mead falling below
1,075 feet of water this past year. This means less
Colorado River water is flowing into Arizona. Historic drought
conditions are impacting critical infrastructure that provides
water and power to the region, like the Hoover Dam, and Lakes
Mead and Powell…. For now, [Bureau of Reclamation official
Dan] Bunk says Yuma and its agricultural industry remain
unaffected by the tier one shortage. But the future is unknown.
The water crisis in Arizona affects all of us. From our tap
water to our crops, even our electricity. The supply is running
short, so FOX 10’s Steve Nielsen headed to Lake Powell to
investigate our ongoing water crisis and uncover what’s being
done to safeguard our most important resource in the desert.
… Lake Powell historical data in 2011 shows the water
level was at 3,622 feet. It ebbs and flows a little bit every
year, but there’s been a steep drop off the last two
years. As of May 2022, the water level is sitting at
3,522.
The [discoveries of human remains on the dry bed bed of
Lake Mead] come amid the Southwest’s driest two decades in
more than a thousand years, as drought-starved bodies of water
yield one surprise after another. At Elephant Butte Reservoir
in New Mexico, a bachelor party stumbled across a fossilized
mastodon skull that is millions of years old. In Utah last
year, the receding waters of Lake Powell revealed a car that
had plunged 600 feet off a cliff, killing the driver. And as
Lake Powell dries up, archaeologists are getting a chance to
study newly emerged Indigenous dwellings.
The Colorado River plays a pivotal role in the American West,
supplying water to more than 40 million people, irrigating 5
million acres of farmland, and providing critical habitat for
rare fish, birds and plants. But demand for the Colorado’s
water far exceeds supply in the fast-growing Southwest, as a
climate change-fueled megadrought and rising temperatures place
an unprecedented strain on the iconic river, The Washington
Post’s Karin Brulliard, Matt McClain and Erin Patrick O’Connor
report.
It is a powerhouse: a 1,450-mile waterway that stretches from
the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million
people in seven U.S. states, 30 federally recognized tribes and
Mexico. It hydrates 5 million acres of agricultural land and
provides critical habitat for rare fish, birds and plants. But
the Colorado’s water was overpromised when it was first
allocated a century ago. Demand in the fast-growing Southwest
exceeds supply, and it is growing even as supply drops amid a
climate change-driven megadrought and rising temperatures.
States and cities are now scrambling to forestall the gravest
impacts to growth, farming, drinking water and electricity,
while also aiming to protect their own interests.
Climate change is making the West hotter and drier, threatening
the Colorado River system, including the man-made reservoirs of
Lake Powell in Utah and Lake Mead in Nevada that provide water
for 40 million people in seven states. The National Park
Service has been forced to shut down 11 boat ramps at the Lake
Powell recreation area, which draws millions of visitors. The
critically low lake levels could soon cause the Glen Canyon Dam
to stop producing hydropower for more than five million people
in six states, forcing them to find alternative sources.
The electricity generated [at Flaming Gorge Dam], in northern
Utah near the Wyoming state line, helps keep the lights on
across 10 states. It’s made possible by a dam that interrupts
the Green River, which meanders into the Colorado River at Lake
Powell hundreds of miles downstream before flowing southwest to
Lake Mead — meaning as an Angeleno, I’ve been drinking this
water my whole life. … The Biden
administration said this month it would release an
extra 500,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir
over the next year, as part of a desperate effort to stop
Powell from falling so low that Glen Canyon Dam can no longer
generate power.
While the seven Colorado River Basin states including Arizona
hunt for 500,000 acre-feet a year in water savings in both the
Upper and Lower basins, the biggest problem facing the river
lurks in the shadows: a supply-demand gap that keeps growing.
Over the past five years, the river’s annual water flow,
greatly diminished since 2000 compared to 20th century
averages, has tumbled even faster. Water demands have also
fallen, but not nearly as fast.
For weeks, we’ve been seeing media reports regarding conditions
in the Colorado River Basin – specifically with
regard to our country’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead, which have dropped to record low elevations. The
media have been reporting it accurately. -Written by Tom Buschatzke, director
of Arizona Department of Water Resources; and Ted
Cooke, general manager of Central Arizona
Project.
Over the past four decades, the Western U.S. has demanded more
water. And the landscapes — the valleys and mountains and
lakes — that make up the region’s arid ecosystems have borne
the impacts of increasing water needs in more ways than one.
It’s not only fast-growing cities, searching for faraway
supplies, that have affected these landscapes. The
atmosphere itself has become thirstier, using up, and
potentially evaporating, more water from the land beneath it.
Researchers describe this as increased evaporative demand …
[Despite] the 99.9% consensus in the science community
that the burning of fossil fuel is driving the rise in global
temperatures, a 2021 analysis from the Center for American
Progress identified “109 representatives and 30 senators who
refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused
climate change.” These are the people we are depending on to
steer the Southwest through its driest period since Vikings
roamed the seas. Anyone concerned? Particularly among the 25
million people across three states and Mexico who rely on Lake
Mead for water. -Written by LZ Granderson, LA Times culture and politics
columnist.
Rolf Schmidt-Petersen knows what can happen when a water
shortage hits: Reservoirs shrink and tempers flare. “We
had people literally throwing rocks, tomatoes when Elephant
Butte went down,” recalled Schmidt-Petersen, director of the
New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. He was talking about a
2003 deal to release water from a reservoir in southern New
Mexico and drop the lake by about 33 feet to assist farmers in
the state and neighboring Texas. … Decades later, the
2.2-million-acre-foot reservoir, part of the Rio Grande Basin,
contains only about 260,000 acre-feet of water, according to
the Bureau of Reclamation.
In the early 1900s, there was plenty of water to go around. But
there weren’t enough dams, canals or pipelines to store, move
or make use of it. Devastating floods in California and Arizona
spurred plans for building dams to hold back high river flows.
… Today the West faces conditions that [water law expert
Delph] Carpenter and his peers did not anticipate. In 1922,
Hoover imagined that the basin’s population, which totaled
about 457,000 in 1915, might quadruple in the future.
Today, the Colorado River supplies some 40 million
people – more than 20 times Hoover’s projection.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced two measures [Tuesday]
to boost water levels in Lake Powell, keeping them high enough
to continue generating hydropower at the Glen Canyon Dam. Both
moves are being framed as painful but necessary band-aids,
cutting into reserves elsewhere in the region to stave off the
worst effects of a decades-long drought that has sapped the
nation’s second-largest reservoir. One measure will send water
from upstream to help refill Lake Powell. About 500,000
acre-feet of water will be released from Flaming Gorge
Reservoir, which straddles the border between Wyoming and Utah.
With long-term severe drought continuing to take a toll on the
Colorado River, the federal government is expected to announce
that it will retain some water in one of the river’s major
reservoirs to temporarily stave off what it called increased
uncertainty in water and electricity supplies. … Powell,
behind Glen Canyon Dam, currently holds less than one-fourth of
the amount it held when it filled after the dam was built in
the 1960s.
When Hoover Dam was built near Las Vegas in the 1930s creating
Lake Mead, and when Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 1950s and
’60s creating Lake Powell, the western United States had for
decades been subjected to a wet weather cycle which regularly
caused western rivers to flood. This cycle resulted in the
building of hundreds of dams to both try and control the
flooding, and run the plentiful water out onto the arid land
for irrigation. -Written by Robert E. Bakes, a former Idaho Supreme
Court justice.
Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir, is drying
up. The situation is critical: If water levels at the lake were
to drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would
be halted at the reservoir’s Glen Canyon Dam. The West’s
climate change-induced water crisis is now triggering a
potential energy crisis for millions of people in the Southwest
who rely on the dam as a power source. Over the past several
years, the Glen Canyon Dam has lost about 16% of its capacity
to generate power. The water levels at Lake Powell have dropped
around 100 feet in the last three years.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
Over the last century, cities including Los Angeles, Phoenix
and Las Vegas reshaped the American West by building coal
plants, hydropower dams and nuclear reactors to fuel their
growth. Now those cities are on the verge of doing it again,
only this time with solar panels, wind turbines, long-distance
transmission lines and lithium mines. These proposals are
igniting opposition from conservationists, tribal activists and
rural residents looking to protect landscapes and ecosystems —
and at times their way of life.
Under the pressures of overuse and climate change, the fate of
the entire Colorado River system is being redetermined in real
time, amid what scientists think is the worst drought in over
1,200 years. Now that the reservoir is below 3,525 feet,
it has officially crossed the “hydropower buffer” — which
forces policymakers to start working on a solution. Every
option seems to have immense challenges, with seven states
invested in the matter and 40 million people who are directly
affected by the Colorado River system’s water.
For the past 15 years, federal agencies have tried to subdue
growing populations of quagga mussels, an invasive species that
interferes with water infrastructure and threatens ecosystems.
Crews tried scrubbing the mollusks off equipment,
power washing them off boats and deploying chlorine and UV
lights to prevent them from settling in pipes. But the tiny
mussels have not only resisted all deterrents, they’ve clogged
cooling equipment, reduced water flow to hydropower and
even changed the water quality, making it less suitable for
native species.
The Colorado River Basin is inching ever closer to “Day Zero,”
a term first used in Cape Town, South Africa when they
anticipated the day in 2018 that taps would run dry. Lakes
Powell and Mead, the Colorado River’s two enormous reservoirs,
were full in 2000, storing more than four years of the river’s
average annual flow. For more than two decades water users have
been sipping at that supply, watching them decline. Long-term
drought and climate change is making this issue potentially
catastrophic.
In a letter sent Friday, the seven states that use the Colorado
River agreed with the U.S. Department of Interior
and recommended that federal water managers take an
emergency action aimed at stabilizing a dwindling Lake Powell,
one of the main storage reservoirs on the river. Earlier
this month, federal water managers warned the states,
including Nevada, that they were considering an emergency
action to hold water back in Lake Powell, an attempt to
stabilize the reservoir at serious risk of losing the ability
to generate hydropower and deliver water to Page, Arizona, a
city with roughly 7,500 residents, and the LeChee Chapter of
the Navajo Nation.
Flaming Gorge reservoir in Wyoming will release 500,000
acre-feet of water under a new Drought Operations Plan to help
prop up dangerously low water levels at Lake Powell. The plan,
approved Thursday by the Upper Colorado River Commission, does
not call for any water to be released from Blue Mesa west of
Gunnison, but also does not rule out the possibility of that
being an option in the future.
As warm spring winds whip the Eastern Plains, sapping soils of
moisture, and the state’s reservoirs sit at below-average
levels, water managers got more bad news Tuesday: this two-year
drought cycle could continue through the summer and into the
fall leading the state into its third year of below-average
snowpack and streamflows and high wildfire danger. Looking
ahead the weather pattern known as La Niña, which has created
the intense drought of the past two years, is likely to
continue, according to Peter Goble, a climate specialist with
Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center.
In March, the water level of Lake Powell declined below a
threshold at which the Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to generate
power becomes threatened, and the Bureau of Reclamation, the
federal agency that oversees the West’s water infrastructure,
is working with the states above Lake Powell to divert more
water to keep its dam operational. Meanwhile, the states around
Lake Mead have been hashing out the details of a plan to
voluntarily curtail their use to prevent even more dramatic
cuts to Arizona and Nevada from going into effect next year.
If the federal government goes through with its proposal to cut
Colorado River releases from Lake Powell, water users in
Arizona, California and Nevada won’t feel it this year — but
Lake Mead will. Due to what some observers call an accounting
trick, the reduced releases from Lake Powell wouldn’t translate
into immediate cuts or deeper water shortages for the three
Lower Basin states. Instead, the Interior Department’s plan
would lower the already depleted Lake Mead to prop up the even
more depleted Lake Powell…
Arizona’s top water official says he never thought this day
would come so soon. Federal officials are warning that the
West’s escalating water crisis could put some Arizona
communities’ ”health and safety” at risk, by cutting off
their supply of drinking water.
Climate scientist Brad Udall calls
himself the skunk in the room when it comes to the Colorado
River. Armed with a deck of PowerPoint slides and charts that
highlight the Colorado River’s worsening math, the Colorado State
University scientist offers a grim assessment of the river’s
future: Runoff from the river’s headwaters is declining, less
water is flowing into Lake Powell – the key reservoir near the
Arizona-Utah border – and at the same time, more water is being
released from the reservoir than it can sustainably provide.
Twenty years ago, the Colorado River
Basin’s hydrology began tumbling into a historically bad stretch.
The weather turned persistently dry. Water levels in the system’s
anchor reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead plummeted. A river
system relied upon by nearly 40 million people, farms and
ecosystems across the West was in trouble. And there was no guide
on how to respond.
Managing water resources in the Colorado River Basin is not for the timid or those unaccustomed to big challenges. Careers are devoted to responding to all the demands put upon the river: water supply, hydropower, recreation and environmental protection.
All of this while the Basin endures a seemingly endless drought and forecasts of increasing dryness in the future.
Sprawled across a desert expanse
along the Utah-Arizona border, Lake Powell’s nearly 100-foot high
bathtub ring etched on its sandstone walls belie the challenges
of a major Colorado River reservoir at less than half-full. How
those challenges play out as demand grows for the river’s water
amid a changing climate is fueling simmering questions about
Powell’s future.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The Colorado River is arguably one
of the hardest working rivers on the planet, supplying water to
40 million people and a large agricultural economy in the West.
But it’s under duress from two decades of drought and decisions
made about its management will have exceptional ramifications for
the future, especially as impacts from climate change are felt.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
As stakeholders labor to nail down
effective and durable drought contingency plans for the Colorado
River Basin, they face a stark reality: Scientific research is
increasingly pointing to even drier, more challenging times
ahead.
The latest sobering assessment landed the day after Thanksgiving,
when U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate
Assessment concluded that Earth’s climate is changing rapidly
compared to the pace of natural variations that have occurred
throughout its history, with greenhouse gas emissions largely the
cause.
As the Colorado River Basin becomes
drier and shortage conditions loom, one great variable remains:
How much of the river’s water belongs to Native American tribes?
Native Americans already use water from the Colorado River and
its tributaries for a variety of purposes, including leasing it
to non-Indian users. But some tribes aren’t using their full
federal Indian reserved water right and others have water rights
claims that have yet to be resolved. Combined, tribes have rights
to more water than some states in the Colorado River Basin.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
Amy Haas recently became the first non-engineer and the first woman to serve as executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission in its 70-year history, putting her smack in the center of a host of daunting challenges facing the Upper Colorado River Basin.
Yet those challenges will be quite familiar to Haas, an attorney who for the past year has served as deputy director and general counsel of the commission. (She replaced longtime Executive Director Don Ostler). She has a long history of working within interstate Colorado River governance, including representing New Mexico as its Upper Colorado River commissioner and playing a central role in the negotiation of the recently signed U.S.-Mexico agreement known as Minute 323.
Nowhere is the domino effect in
Western water policy played out more than on the Colorado River,
and specifically when it involves the Lower Basin states of
California, Nevada and Arizona. We are seeing that play out now
as the three states strive to forge a Drought Contingency Plan.
Yet that plan can’t be finalized until Arizona finds a unifying
voice between its major water players, an effort you can read
more about in the latest in-depth article of Western Water.
Even then, there are some issues to resolve just within
California.
It’s high-stakes time in Arizona. The state that depends on the
Colorado River to help supply its cities and farms — and is
first in line to absorb a shortage — is seeking a unified plan
for water supply management to join its Lower Basin neighbors,
California and Nevada, in a coordinated plan to preserve water
levels in Lake Mead before
they run too low.
If the lake’s elevation falls below 1,075 feet above sea level,
the secretary of the Interior would declare a shortage and
Arizona’s deliveries of Colorado River water would be reduced by
320,000 acre-feet. Arizona says that’s enough to serve about 1
million households in one year.
Tickets are now on sale for the Water Education Foundation’s April 11-13 tour of the Lower Colorado River.
Don’t miss this opportunity to visit key sites along one of the nation’s most famous rivers, including a private tour of Hoover Dam, Central Arizona Project’s Mark Wilmer pumping plant and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. The tour also visits the Salton Sea, Slab City, the All-American Canal and farming regions in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
Rising temperatures from climate change are having a noticeable
effect on how much water is flowing down the Colorado River. Read
the latest River Report to learn more about what’s
happening, and how water managers are responding.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
A troublesome invasive species is
the quagga mussel, a tiny freshwater mollusk that attaches itself
to water utility infrastructure and reproduces at a rapid rate,
causing damage to pipes and pumps.
First found in the Great Lakes in 1988 (dumped with ballast water
from overseas ships), the quagga mussel along with the zebra
mussel are native to the rivers and lakes of eastern Europe and
western Asia, including the Black, Caspian and Azov Seas and the
Dneiper River drainage of Ukraine and Ponto-Caspian
Sea.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and the country of Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch
map, which is suitable for framing, explains the river’s
apportionment, history and the need to adapt its management for
urban growth and expected climate change impacts.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1964 created Lake Powell.
Both are located in north-central Arizona near the Utah border.
Lake Powell acts as a holding tank for outflow from the Colorado
River Upper Basin States: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
In 2005, after six years of severe
drought in the Colorado River Basin, federal officials and
representatives of the seven basin states — California, Arizona,
Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — began building a
framework to better respond to drought conditions and coordinate
the operations of the basin’s two key reservoirs, Lake Powell and
Lake Mead.
The resulting Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and
the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead (Interim
Guidelines) identified the conditions for shortage determinations
and details of coordinated reservoir operations. The 2007 Interim
Guidelines remain in effect through Dec. 31, 2025.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study and what its
finding might mean for the future of the lifeblood of the
Southwest.
This printed issue of Western Water explores the
historic nature of some of the key agreements in recent years,
future challenges, and what leading state representatives
identify as potential “worst-case scenarios.” Much of the content
for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the Colorado River Symposium. The Foundation
will publish the full proceedings of the Symposium in 2012.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the
Colorado River drought, and the ongoing institutional and
operational changes underway to maintain the system and meet the
future challenges in the Colorado River Basin.
This printed issue of Western Water explores some of the major
challenges facing Colorado River stakeholders: preparing for
climate change, forging U.S.-Mexico water supply solutions and
dealing with continued growth in the basins states. Much of the
content for this issue of Western Water came from the in-depth
panel discussions at the September 2009 Colorado River Symposium.
With interstate discussions of critical Colorado River issues
seemingly headed for stalemate, Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton stepped in May 2 to defuse, or at least defer, a
potentially divisive debate over water releases from Lake Powell.
