Powell 60% Empty, Mead at 50% - Basin Faces Unprecedented Water Stress

[hatrack]

EDIT

The 1,450-mile-long river that greens 3.5 million acres of farm and range land and helps feed the faucets of 25 million people may within a few years lack the water to quench the West's great thirst. For the first time ever, the seven states that rely on the Colorado are confronting the possibility of a shortage.

"They've never had to face a shortage of this consequence," said Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority that supplies Las Vegas, one of the most river-dependent cities in the Colorado basin. "When you're right up against it and facing the possibility of inadequate supplies to municipalities or farmers or jeopardizing recreation values, these are very tough choices." The states are meeting now to try to figure out how they will deal with a shortage if the drought continues. As with everything else on the heavily regulated Colorado, the answers will be found in a complex tangle of law and politics.

EDIT

If the states don't come up with a plan, the federal government will. "The secretary will be forced to take action within three years, and potentially within two, if the states haven't solved the problems themselves," Bennett Raley, assistant secretary for water and science for the U.S. Department of the Interior, warned last spring.

EDIT

The last time it was full, in 1999, the Powell reservoir extended for 186 miles upriver. It is now 145 miles long. The lake level has dropped nearly 130 feet. If it continues its downward creep, there may not be enough water to generate hydropower in two years. By 2007 or 2008, Powell could sink below the dam's intake tubes. At that point, the lake would be more than three-quarters empty. Releases from the reservoir couldn't be made until nature provided more water. This year, nature delivered half the normal inflow. In 2002, one of the driest years ever recorded on the Colorado, it was a quarter of the norm. As the reservoir's levels plunge, so does hydropower production. At Lake Mead, Hoover Dam's generating capacity is down 17%. At Glen Canyon Dam, it has dropped 30%. The Western Area Power Administration, which distributes electricity from the dams, is cutting deliveries and expects to spend more than $30 million this year buying power to replace the lost Glen Canyon energy. Meanwhile, the National Park Service is spending millions of dollars chasing the retreating waters at Mead and Powell, moving stranded recreation facilities and extending boat ramps that now end in cracked mud.

It could get worse. The drought is the most severe to hit the river since record-keeping began in 1906 and among the worst in 500 years."

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lakepowell3oct03,1,1333.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[medeak]

1. Las Vegas has gotten away

with unrivaled development and lack of conservation....all the while taking water from northern part of state.

Mother nature is teaching them a lesson.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Just in time for Peak Oil...

all as North American natural gas supplies tighten up.

I think it's going to be a bumpy ride.