At the same time,demand has risen due to increased population growth in the West. You have permission to edit this article. Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir and one thatprovides water and power to millions of people in southern California, has reached its lowest levels since its first filling in the 1960s. 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. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. It sucks up moisture from forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity. It is not creating certainty in the water market, Mankin said. Even if nothing is done, he believes the risk quite low. Dry soils soak up snow when it melts, keeping it from rivers and reservoirs. And what does that mean for the users on the river? At full pool, Powell's water line lies 3,700 feet above sea level, and at 3,370 feet, it will reach deadpool levels. As an imbalance between water supplies and demands grows in the region, KUNC is committed to covering the stories that emerge. ET: The dead pool level of Lake Powell has been corrected. Water levels at . Lake Mead is the nation's largest reservoir, a companion to Lake Powell. This is when were supposed to be gaining and accumulating water in the form of snowpack, and thats not happening, Selover said. Thousands of Tucson homes use 250% more water than you. It supplies water and power to Arizona, California and Nevada. 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. But the warming temperatures that were seeing make it considerably worse than it would have been. At 3,490 feet, Glen Canyon Dam reaches "minimum power pool." Experts say it wont be a silver bullet, but could stave off near-term danger. We don't know what happens below 3,490, said Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director at the Nature Conservancy. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Copyright 2021 Science Friday Initiative. JOHN DANKOSKY: Local science stories of national significance. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. What is the current status of Lake Powell? The river carried an average of 14.7 million acre feet from 1906 through 2015. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide. This is the highest percentage of land in the rivers Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the regions driest year on record. 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. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. JOHN DANKOSKY: When you use the term megadrought, that sounds like a newer term. Water levels in Lake Powell dropped to a new record low on Tuesday. 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. That is incorrect. The four Upper Basin states Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are devising a three-legged stool plan to protect Lake Powell. Those cutbacks are likely to grow steeper in 2021. What about the idea of a water shortage? 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. 2020. Welcome back to Science Friday, Luke. Okay. Kathleen Davis is a producer at Science Friday, which means she spends the week brainstorming, researching, and writing, typically in that order. Frankel criticizes water managers for their inaction in the face of those trends. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages athttp://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/. Lake Powell has been called Jewel of the Colorado by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. It's been a vital force for the intermountain West because of its ability to. Many of the. The southwestern states have been gripped by drought for over 22 years, experts 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. They werent able to come up with an agreement. The water in Lake Powell is low because the amount of water in the Colorado River has been falling for decades. 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. In the short term, yes. Drought Conditions Affect Two-Thirds of the U.S. Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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. We are really in unprecedented territory right now, and its not even close, Meyer said. 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. Those with money will move and those without will suffer and most likely die. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, for water. Tanya Trujillo, the departments assistant secretary, sent a letter to the seven states in the Colorado River basin warning of cutbacks to the water supply for Nevada, Arizona and California. The Colorado River systems reservoirs combined arecurrently less than half full. And its easy to put them off if you get a wet year. The Colorado River basin has experienced three D4 droughts in the last 20 years, including the current one. We called several of them and asked for discrete numbers that capture the current state of the Colorado River basin. And Lake Mead is currently at 37% 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. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. We don't know if we can release water to meet downstream requirements. Lake Mead's decline is not happening in isolation, but is the result of a two-decade drought hitting the western U.S. and causing critical water shortages on the Colorado River. The dropping water and the reservoirs expanding bathtub rings are also tied to policy. A . Now what? Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. Extremely dry years that produce eye-popping statistics tend to grab officials by the shoulders and give them a good shake. 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 . Give us an idea, if you would, just how low the supply is in the basins reservoirs right now. The Lower Basin states have already agreed on two short-term programs to reduce their take of water from Mead. The dryness is currently off the charts in parts of the watershed. 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. With modest reductions in flow, they would be meaningful.. Lake powell has an electrical generation station there. Future conservation efforts are highly uncertain. JOHN DANKOSKY: So you know, with so many stories like this, we say, this is probably due to climate change. This Statista chart shows the share of the continental United States' area under different levels of drought between 2018 and 2022. Forecasts dont paint a pretty picture for snowpack either. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories. Grim Future for Lake Powell Water levels in Lake Powell are at record lows. It stores water as part of the Colorado River Compact and produceselectricity through the hydroelectric turbines in Glen Canyon dam. Lake Powell upstream of Lake Mead on the Colorado River is at its lowest level on record. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. Down the Colorado River lies Lake Mead, which is also seeing lower water levels than ever before. Mountain snowpack is generally below average for this time of year, so that boost may not be as big as it has been in years past. An official shortage declaration from the federal government could come as early as this year, as Lake Mead is currently projected to be below 1,075 feet in elevation at the end of 2021. One acre-foot generally provides enough water for one to two households for a year. Levels on Lake Powell, which stores water for the. So Luke, I dont know is this all just because of climate change? Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". 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. 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. John Dankosky works with the radio team to create our weekly show, and is helping to build our State of Science Reporting Network. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoirs generating capacity, to about 800 megawattsabout 60 percent. 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. 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. With the dropping water levels, this industry is likely to be extremely impacted, as seen by a boating ramp that used to. The latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show there's a. 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. Thats important for the entire region, Fleck said, because the backdrop of an impending crisis will set the tone for those negotiations. These ICS uses, at the high end, amount to two and a half feet of elevation in Lake Mead. Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. Work on the dam that created Lake Powell began in 1956 and was finished in 1966. which could funnel up to 300,000 acre-feet from Powell.One of those projects, Utah's Lake Powell pipeline to St. George, would . Luke, well continue to follow your reporting. Skip Navigation. 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. Lake Powell (credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) The power pool mark is 3,490 feet of elevation. 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. 2002, 2018 and 2021 are the most intense dry periods on record for the basin. This segment is part ofThe State of Science, a series featuring science stories from public radio stations across the United States. Because the deficit is so substantial, Meyer said its very likely the watershed will see drought conditions persist in 2021. But the last time it was anywhere close to that level was 1999. That includes releases of water upstream of Lake Powell, and voluntary cuts in Powells downstream neighbor, Lake Mead. The state already is on the edge of shortages for its $4 billion Central Arizona Project. The combined reservoirs in Utah are below 50% full. 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. Three D4 droughts in the basins reservoirs right now: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation the. From forests, backyard gardens and crop fields with greater intensity, demand has risen to. 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