They both use water from the Colorado River. 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. Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. It also helps in fraud preventions. How does climate change affect you? 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. 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? Why is Lake Mead drying up? 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. Colorado River tribes pose statewide leasing idea, Risks to Lake Mead, Colorado River intensifying greatly, federal officials say, Arizona basketball | Tommy Lloyd on the wild, fun nature of college hoops | Feb. 28, 2023, Millions at Risk of Slipping Into Poverty as COVID-Era SNAP Benefits Set to End, More than 300 words have been added to the English dictionary. JOHN DANKOSKY: So obviously, people are preparing for worse times. Phoenix has underground wells and plusa it gets water from the CAP canal directly from the Colorado river, then there are several near full dams nearby. At its highest, in 1983, the lake was 3,708 feet above sea level. Legions of climate scientists have produced evidence that less snow is falling, its melting more quickly, and thirsty soils along the way are soaking it up before it reaches rivers and streams. It is forecast to have a new record low next summer, saidHasencamp. They are trying to negotiate a three-state deal that would reduce water deliveries even further, he said. If the drought and excessive water use continues, Lake Mead could reach dead pool in the next two years and Lake Powell could soon follow. 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. 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. Luke Runyon is the water reporter at KUNC in Greeley, Colorado. And this is just the beginning of what. Lake Powell (credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) The power pool mark is 3,490 feet of elevation. This cookie is native to PHP applications. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet a possibility still years . Lake Powell could dry up in as little as six years, study says, Cutbacks in Arizona Water deliveries possible, The highly anticipated Portillo's is now open in Tucson, Nebraska cheerleader competes by herself at state competition, but crowd doesn't let her feel alone, Lawmakers want to strip 19 cities' rights but Tucson is real target, New game, entertainment center makes southwest Tucson a bigger draw, Watch: The most notable things Tommy Lloyd said after Arizona's heartbreaking loss to ASU, Tim Steller's column: Converting Tucson's big boxes, vast parking lots into housing tantalizes, A big ol' guide to this weekend's Tucson Festival of Books, U of A eliminates musical theater program in Tucson, Greg Hansen: Pac-12's apathy toward basketball might be best reason for UA to leave, Celebrity Las Vegas chefs opening Tucson restaurant, Pima County to use signs to dissuade panhandling at intersections. Many of the. Overall, the river's flowis down 20% in this century relative to the 20th century. A . Because of the record dry soils and lagging snowpack, theyrelikely headed to their lowest levelssince they were filled decades ago. There is also 29 federally-recognized tribes in the basin, of which 10 of those tribes hold a significant amount of water rights from the 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. Lakes Mead and Powell. This is prompting a lot of people to ask whats going to happen next. The Southwest United States is wrapping up an abnormally dry winter. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, for water. If decision makers do nothing and take no action and just let the reservoir crash without structurally modifying the dam, there will be a lot of really big problems.. 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. If the reservoirs reach dead-pool levels, more than a million people using the electricity could be required to find new power sources. If its dry there, that means many more problems as the water flows downstream. Copyright 2021 Science Friday Initiative. 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. Monsoon rains didnt arrive. 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. One acre-foot generally provides enough water for one to two households for a year. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. It sucks up moisture from forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity. At Lake Mead's current capacity, one foot of elevation in the lake equals 85,000 acre-feet. 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. Shes a big fan of stories related to strange animal facts and dystopian technology. Kuhns analysis is the worst case, said Pat Tyrrell, Wyoming state engineer who has been involved in the Upper Basin water talks. This summer, the water. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Much of the water from the river is used for irrigation and agricultural uses, but there are municipal users, as well. That is incorrect. The Lower Basins legal share is 7.5 million acre feet a year. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Water levels at . It can hold 9.3 trillion gallons of water at its peak and reach an elevation of 1,220 feet above sea level. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. 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. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. 2002, 2018 and 2021 are the most intense dry periods on record for the basin. The shoreline it creates, in a red rock desert, is longer than the entire U.S. West Coast.. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage. The story has been updated to reflect this information. At 3,490 feet, Glen Canyon Dam reaches "minimum power pool." The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". 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. It survives, she said. Lake Powell is supposed to buffer water supply during times of drought [and] it is not performing that function now. And it's not a backroom voodoo mystery that only fortune tellers can forecast. Falling water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell have been concerning for several years. We are still facing a nearly 1 in 4 chance of Lake Powell returning to "minimum power pool" by 2024 - a risk that remains steady through 2026, the latest year for which Reclamation has forecast. Those cutbacks are likely to grow steeper in 2021. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The Glen Canyon Dam, D'deest'in Htsaa, marks where the water level in Lake Powell on the Colorado River, reaches. John Dankosky works with the radio team to create our weekly show, and is helping to build our State of Science Reporting Network. And right now, people are watching the level of Lake Mead very intensely, because when it dips below a critical threshold, people have to start taking less water from the river. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. The lake avoided serious problems during the drought because, in 1999, it was almost full. 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. So water from the Colorado River is now pumped across the state of Arizona via the Central Arizona Project (CAP). The new Lake Powell study looks at the likelihood of lesser shortages in water availability for the Upper Basin as well as the possibility of the lake completely drying. The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. Record-breaking high temperatures dragged well into fall. But its fundamental purpose under the federal law that created it is to serve as a water insurance policy for the Colorado River Basin. This segment is part ofThe State of Science, a series featuring science stories from public radio stations across the United States. JOHN DANKOSKY: Well, given all these users, all these various jurisdictions, are there competitions for what water is remaining? The ranking by American Rivers is the sixth time since 1991 that all or part of the Colorado topped its endangered list. In a wetter year, it will release 9 million acre feet to Mead. 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. Ultimately, experts said the future of the lake must be addressed in a way that creates the certainty it was intended to provide. Forecasts dont paint a pretty picture for snowpack either. Experts say it wont be a silver bullet, but could stave off near-term danger. 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. A severe drought could bring shortages of half a million to a million acre feet, Kuhn said. But a new study warns that the lake could virtually dry up in as few as six years if the region gets a repeat of the dry spell it experienced from 2000 to 2005. As a key ingredient in everything from asphalt to microchips, scientists are trying to make sand extraction more ecologically friendly. Share on Facebook; . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. 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 . The lake isn't low enough yet to cause concerns about getting water out, but any hope of it refilling is years away, if ever, due to lowered rain and snow and increasing evaporation. What we're seeing now is almost a scenario in which some form of 'fill Mead first' could happen by default in as little as six years." Between the drought years of 2000-2005, Lake Powell lost 13 . Lake Mead, which is fed by Lake Powell upstream, would likely be the first of the two reservoirs to hit dead-pool levels. Experts say that the reservoir may dry up completely in a few decades. With the dropping water levels, this industry is likely to be extremely impacted, as seen by a boating ramp that used to be used to launch boats now having a 50 foot drop between the end of the ramp and the water. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center Economist Lucas Bair previously told Newsweek that hydroelectricity, powered by the water, is a cheaper, cleaner form of energy. Lake Oroville, a key component of California's water supply, also benefited from the early-winter storms, as . 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. Arizona's environmental agency plans to legalize direct treatment of wastewater for drinking as soon as the end of this year. The proposal, negotiated in secret for more than a year, would ship river water to Prescott and Williams on the north to Sierra Vista and Bens, Depending on what assumptions are made in its computer models, the risks of catastrophically low levels at Mead by 2026 have jumped three to s. The sp_t cookie is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. As part of 2019s Drought Contingency Plan, water managers agreed that the reservoirs water should be kept above 3,525 feet to provide a buffer before it got even lower, giving the agencies in charge some time to come up with a fix. water level is too low to flow downstream, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Since Lake Powell is primarily sandstone, the lake actually leaks water into the porous rocks. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Definitions explained. Today its about half full, Kuhn said. LUKE RUNYON: Yeah, so this is something that is harder for us to visualize, because were so used to looking at reservoirs and rivers. Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that 3,490 feet is Lake Powell's "dead pool" level. 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 cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Are experts looking at this saying, its just going to get worse in the Colorado River basin? The nation's second-largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are slipping dangerously low. What does the forecast look like? Levels on Lake Powell, which stores water for the. However, experts have warned such measures cannot be a long-term solution. The low levels arent just causing hand-wringing among the Wests water officials. In addition, the river itself experiences more evaporation. 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. I would say less than 20 percent, Ostler said. 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. In the second stage of Fill Mead First, the reservoir's level would near 3,374 feet, near the river outlet works. The latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show there's a. But there is still this fundamental supply-demand imbalance in the Colorado River basin. At the time of publication, Lake Powell was sitting at only 3,529 feet only four feet above this important threshold. "It would kill 50 to 60% of the businesses in town," said Franz. In an average year, Lake Powell gets enough water that it can release a bit more 8.23 million acre-feet a year. Skip Navigation. For the authoritative record of Science Fridays programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. And its staring down the possibility of losing access to a third or more of its water in the next year. 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. They've been ignoring the problem coming for decades and decades. 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. He and his wife have four cats, thousands of bees, and a yoga studio in the sleepy Northwest hills of Connecticut. Lake Powell has been called Jewel of the Colorado by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. Lake Mead and Lake Powell rise and fall together, said Chuck Cullom, the Central Arizona Projects Colorado River programs manager. Theyre already low, because the entire watershed has been experiencing above-average temperatures and below-average river flows since the year 2000. According to the National Park Service, contaminants from the newly exposed shorelines are reentering warm, shallow areas and becoming more concentrated. Lake Powell hasn't been this low since June of 1965, just two years after it began to fill with water. 1. It is something in peer-reviewed, published science for decades and decades that the managers of the Colorado River have been ignoring.. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. New York, NY 10004. 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. The Hoover Dam is therefore also at risk of declining hydroelectric power generation as Lake Mead approaches deadpool levels. At 3,522 feet, Lake Powell's water surface elevation is at its lowest point since it was first filled in the 1960s, per a statement. Lake Mead's water levels were 1,047.38 feet as of February 23. You have permission to edit this article. The April-July forecast for Colorado River runoff into Lake Powell is 74 percent of average. It stores water as part of the Colorado River Compact and produceselectricity through the hydroelectric turbines in Glen Canyon dam. Reservoir storage is the best single number that captures two things: how much water nature provides and how much water humans are consuming out of that provision, Fleck said. Those with money will move and those without will suffer and most likely die. Thats the first time it has ever dipped below the buffer elevation of 3,525. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoirs generating capacity, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. As of Thursday, Lake Mead was at 1,045.79 feet. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. Climate scientists call it D4. The lake was just under 24 percent full as of last week, and had lost 16 feet in the last year. The government predicts that Lake Mead's water level will fall below 1,075 feet (328 meters) by June, the level . 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. However, he said the biggest impact will be the water. We don't know if the dam will operate as expected. Is climate change the same thing as global warming? And youre able to say, oh, the rivers high, or the river is low. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. JOHN DANKOSKY: When you use the term megadrought, that sounds like a newer term. He has mostly covered environmental stories since 2005, focusing on water supplies, climate change, the Rosemont Mine and the endangered jaguar. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. The water level decline . And thats left Lake Powell at 34% of its capacity. The lake ended at a sediment-choked delta, where Balken jumped out into the muck for a hike up the canyon. More than four scientific studieshave pinned a large part of the decline on human climate change. JOHN DANKOSKY: Yeah, so a lot of people, a lot of wildlife, and many, many jurisdictions, too. LUKE RUNYON: Yeah, and this is a question that has been of intense interest to climate scientists. Glen Canyon Dam in Lake Powell near Page, Arizona on July 4, 2010. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. Creosote is one I personally like to call it the cockroach of the vegetation world because pretty much nothing kills creosote. Meanwhile, climate change is adding pressure to the entire river system, exacerbating existing supply and demand imbalances. Down the Colorado River lies Lake Mead, which is also seeing lower water levels than ever before. Work on the dam that created Lake Powell began in 1956 and was finished in 1966. Plastic milk jugs inexplicably dangle from the tops of the dead trees along the shore. The study was financed by the district, which is based in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, along with the Southwestern Water Conservation District in Durango, and four water groups in Western Colorado that represent various interests. "Its hard to overstate how important the Colorado River is to the entire American southwest.. Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The reality is that it's probably too little, too late.. 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. With the reservoirs approaching their lowest levels in modern history, that brings us to our final number: 2026. If the water level continues falling on its own, below minimum power pool, the dam is physically incapable of releasing a lot of water. Asthe latest round of federal forecastsfor the rivers flow shows, its plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year. Thanks so much for joining us. Lake Powell is in crisis. The . And thats Lake Powell in southern Utah and Lake Mead, which is on the Nevada-Arizona border near Las Vegas. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. If that does come to pass, Tyrell said he is fairly confident we can deal with worst case scenario if it ever happens.. Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. As an imbalance between water supplies and demands grows in the region, KUNC is committed to covering the stories that emerge. As the drought continues and global warming evaporates water supplying the reservoirs, each reservoir isn't far from dead pool, which is when the water level is too low to flow downstream or power the turbines that provide hydroelectric power. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. "We can make up energy through fossil fuels, but if we fall short on water, we have to restrict supply because there are little to no replacements," he said. 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 . Both reservoirs have troublingly low water levels at 1,054.79 and 3,524.22 feet above sea level, respectively. 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. What to know about the West's ongoing water crisis: Lake Powell is the nation's second-largestreservoir. In this column provided by Writers on the Range . The water level on Lake Powell is 100 feet from its high mark in August 2013. The Colorado River systems reservoirs combined arecurrently less than half full. 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 . Its depth level currently stands at around 3,530 feet. 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. JOHN DANKOSKY: So its not just the reservoirs, though, where you see these dramatic pictures of just how low the water is. 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. Welcome back to Science Friday, Luke. Luke covers the Colorado River basin. LUKE RUNYON: Sure, so much of the attention in the basin goes towards the rivers largest reservoirs, which also happen to be the biggest reservoirs in the entire United States. Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. 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 that group includes the Navajo Nation, the Southern Ute tribe, the Quechan Indian tribe. Some of Americas largest cities depend on the water from Lake Mead. 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. 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. California broke from six other Western states in proposal to cut Colorado River use as water levels reach historic lows. "Arizona is, to a greater or lesser degree, selling water to California," CAP attorney said of the later-killed deal. If levels dropped below 3,490 feet, there wouldnt be enough water flowing through Glen Canyon Dams turbines to generate power. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Water management requires planning for the future. I mean, what sort of disputes are coming to the forefront because of this? Its also headed toward a record low later this year. More. Throughout the history of the American West, water issues have shown their ability to both unite and divide communities. This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. 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. 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. Kathleen Davis is a producer at Science Friday, which means she spends the week brainstorming, researching, and writing, typically in that order. All signs point to a hotter, drier future for the Western U.S. As Lake Mead outside Las Vegas and Lake Powell in Utah decline, certain policies are triggered into action. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. Just as water demand is going up, the supply is going down. 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 its done intentionally, the drawbacks of losing the reservoir could be minimized and the benefits could be maximized, Balken told The Hill. And it would increase the likelihood of cutbacks in river water deliveries to Arizona, in particular. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. And what does that mean for the users on the river? 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. Of land to a height of one foot is too low to flow downstream, Practices. Staring down the possibility of losing access to a height of one foot is fed Lake. ; it would increase the likelihood of cutbacks in River water deliveries even further, he the! 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