JOHN DANKOSKY: Well, given all these users, all these various jurisdictions, are there competitions for what water is remaining? what little rain and snow has fallen dries . Officials have already taken some stopgap measures to avert the lake getting down to the pivotal 3,490-foot mark. Frankel criticizes water managers for their inaction in the face of those trends. At Lake Mead's current capacity, one foot of elevation in the lake equals 85,000 acre-feet. Climatologist Jon Meyer with the Utah Climate Center said the number that captures the severity for him is 12 inches. Lake Powell is a few hundred feet above dead-pool level. Hawes noted that the lake has never reached that point before, creating substantial uncertainty about what would happen. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". 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. 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. And this is just the beginning of what. "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. Thats important for the entire region, Fleck said, because the backdrop of an impending crisis will set the tone for those negotiations. Its companion reservoir, Lake Mead, is at levels almost as low. The future of the reservoir is largely uncertain, but climate science and recent actions by the government are providing some hints as to what might happen in the near future. The Lower Basin states have already agreed on two short-term programs to reduce their take of water from Mead. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet a possibility still years . Federal and state officials have committed to a more inclusive process that integrates the needs of tribes, environmental and recreation groups, and Mexico. The new studys analysis is consistent with the studies and analyses CAP has been doing and is part of the reason its been focusing on trying to protect Lake Mead, Cullom said. And so when you have snow thats melting off, it gets soaked up into the ground before it flows into a river or flows into a reservoir. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. So Luke, I dont know is this all just because of climate change? The Santa Cruz River is now a giant bed of dust and sand. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Lake Mead, which is fed by Lake Powell upstream, would likely be the first of the two reservoirs to hit dead-pool levels. JOHN DANKOSKY: Local science stories of national significance. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. The wells that now supply Tucson are at 400 - 500 feet under the surface. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. "Its hard to overstate how important the Colorado River is to the entire American southwest.. He and his wife have four cats, thousands of bees, and a yoga studio in the sleepy Northwest hills of Connecticut. "It would kill 50 to 60% of the businesses in town," said Franz. In those cases, what's revealed is the dry and dusty lake-bedwhich can be a problem in its own right. This story was reported by Luke Runyon on KUNC. That deficit is about the same amount of precipitation that falls across Utah in an entire year. The dropping water and the reservoirs expanding bathtub rings are also tied to policy. Thats about the amount of water that our soils are behind in terms of what they normally would have, Meyer said. Lake Mead's water levels were 1,047.38 feet as of February 23. For context, on the scale of no drought to worst drought, theres no category that captures conditions more dry than exceptional. "Climate change makes these extreme weather events both more frequent and more severe, '' Matthew Casale, Environment Campaigns Director at non-profit advocacy group PIRG, previously told Newsweek. The water in Lake Powell is low because the amount of water in the Colorado River has been falling for decades. Explain that a little bit for us, Luke, and just how dire the situation is for the groundwater in the region. Its depth level currently stands at around 3,530 feet. For those talks to start in the middle of another record-breaking dry period should make it clear to everyone involved: the future of the Colorado River is all about learning to live with less. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet a possibility still years. You would have to go back to April of 1937, also twoyears into its initial filling, to find levels that low. I mean, what sort of disputes are coming to the forefront because of this? which could funnel up to 300,000 acre-feet from Powell.One of those projects, Utah's Lake Powell pipeline to St. George, would . The cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. The reality is that it's probably too little, too late.. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. The dam's evil has had no more prolific publicist than the writer Edward Abbey, whose Monkey Wrench Gang aspired ultimately to bring down the dam. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 For the authoritative record of Science Fridays programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. 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? At this stage a significant amount of Glen Canyon . He has mostly covered environmental stories since 2005, focusing on water supplies, climate change, the Rosemont Mine and the endangered jaguar. In March, the reservoir passed an important threshold. Newsweek previously. 2002, 2018 and 2021 are the most intense dry periods on record for the basin. If the water level continues falling on its own, below minimum power pool, the dam is physically incapable of releasing a lot of water. The answer is almost certainly, no, we're not at the bottom of impacts, said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. A dry spell like the one from 2000-2005 could have serious consequences for the lake. : Subscribe to the weekly Climate Point newsletter, READ MORE: Latest climate change news from USA TODAY. Experts say that the reservoir may dry up completely in a few decades. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. 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. VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. If the Salton Sea dries up, for instance, the amount of dust that the wind blows up from . 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. Forecasts are calling for 4.1 million acre-feet of water to flow into Lake Powell from April to July this year, but water managers are obligated to release more than 7 million acre-feet out of the lake. Theyre already low, because the entire watershed has been experiencing above-average temperatures and below-average river flows since the year 2000. Every other state in the watershed had one of its top five driest years on record. The southwestern US has been dealing with drought conditions for years, and thats had a big impact on the Colorado River basin. Lake Powell has been called "Jewel of the Colorado" by the federal agency that built it, the Bureau of Reclamation. 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. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage. And what does that mean for the users on the river? More than four scientific studieshave pinned a large part of the decline on human climate change. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. As of Thursday, Lake Mead was at 1,045.79 feet. Is this as bad as climate change is going to get in shrinking the snowpacks in the headwaters? 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. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Its not just like, you get a miracle year and youre out of it. 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Whether the six-year cycle of 2000-05 repeats itself is anybodys guess, said Pat Tyrrell, Wyoming state engineer who has been involved in the Upper Basin water talks. "The federal government generally prefers to let the stakeholders work things through, Sorensen said. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Hes also been a long-time guest host on Science Friday. This is the highest percentage of land in the rivers Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the regions driest year on record. 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. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to fill one acre of land to a height of one foot. 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. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Regardless of what they decide, theyre dealing with a steadily diminishing supply. In an average year, Lake Powell gets enough water that it can release a bit more 8.23 million acre-feet a year. Even hardy desert plants, the ones well-adapted to water scarcity, have struggled. 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. Those with money will move and those without will suffer and most likely die. 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. It stores water as part of the Colorado River Compact and produceselectricity through the hydroelectric turbines in Glen Canyon dam. Lake Powell generates power for about 5.8 million households and businesses in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Meanwhile, Lake Powells projected decline in 2021 recently triggered the Upper Basin plan to be used for the first time. The Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell and the Hoover Dam forms Lake Mead. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. Given todays changing climate, led by continued warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, any knowledge we have of the past that historically would help us make predictions does not help us any more, Udall said. Hes a reporter at KUNC, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Glen Canyon Institute has advocated for draining Lake Powell, both to replenish Lake Mead and to restore Glen Canyon, which was flooded to create Lake Powell. The historic megadrought that is squeezing some Western states water supplies will also likely start showing up in energy bills, because those dams cant produce as much electricity. Its also in the groundwater, something that you cant see. Big Water, Utah It's hard to believe a place as beautiful as Lake Powell is also a shadow of its former self. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. 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. At its highest, in 1983, the lake was 3,708 feet above sea level. JOHN DANKOSKY: So obviously, people are preparing for worse times. Lake Mead's level is 1,047 feet above sea level. Both reservoirs have troublingly low water levels at 1,054.79 and 3,524.22 feet above sea level, respectively. 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. LUKE RUNYON: So seven US states make up the Colorado River basin. Lake Powell is in crisis. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. Its also headed toward a record low later this year. Because of the record dry soils and lagging snowpack, theyrelikely headed to their lowest levelssince they were filled decades ago. Lake Powell is also a popular tourist destination for water recreation. If Lake Powell recedes much further, one of the nation's largest reservoirs could be at risk of no longer generating hydropower for the region. In the desert of California lies another manmade lake condemned to death, the Salton Sea. Last week, the lake reached a disturbing new. 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. Record-breaking high temperatures dragged well into fall. In the long term, probably not. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. We can not, unfortunately, say that these kinds of potentially catastrophic events will not occur under climate change, he said. Today its about half full, Kuhn said. It doesn't strain the mind to imagine us losing power within a year. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. It supplies water and power to Arizona, California and Nevada. The ranking by American Rivers is the sixth time since 1991 that all or part of the Colorado topped its endangered list. Lake Oroville (of the enormous spillway failure fame) and Lake Shasta, two of California's largest reservoirs, are at critical levels. Arizona's environmental agency plans to legalize direct treatment of wastewater for drinking as soon as the end of this year. Things will have to change in how we do business.. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. The lower basin is made up of Arizona, Nevada, and California. Even lower, at 3,370 feet, the reservoir hits "dead pool," at which point water can no longer pass through the dam by the power of gravity. 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. Its 90% of the water supply to Las Vegas, 50% to Phoenix, effectively 100% to Tucson and 25% to Los Angeles, said Udall. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Drought Conditions Affect Two-Thirds of the U.S. Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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. By January, the bureau projects water levels at Lake Mead to fall to 1,065.85 feet nine feet below the first shortage trigger elevation. Meanwhile, climate change is adding pressure to the entire river system, exacerbating existing supply and demand imbalances. Its not quite as bad as 2002, she said, but it could easily get there. Because of that, its expected that the Department of the Interior'sBureau of Reclamation, which oversees water management, will mandate onesometime next year. Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River, Arizona. Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis@tucson.com or 806-7746. Experts say it wont be a silver bullet, but could stave off near-term danger. But there is still this fundamental supply-demand imbalance in the Colorado River basin. 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. "That means that due to climate change, it is more likely that we will see [more] extreme heat waves". Stretching for 186 miles along the border of Utah and Arizona, Lake Powell serves as one of two major reservoirs that anchor the Colorado River. 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. The nations second-largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are slipping dangerously low. Lake Powell (credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) The power pool mark is 3,490 feet of elevation. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Conditions have been deteriorating across the river basin since the summer of 2020. Mead was created when the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935. 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. The first warning sign would come if a drought pushed the lake below 3,525 feet, almost 85 feet below where it is now. Joining me to shed a little bit more light on this is Luke Runyon. 1. 2020. And as we warm even further, it makes it that much harder for our infrastructure, our water storage, to recover. With the reservoirs approaching their lowest levels in modern history, that brings us to our final number: 2026. The Southwest United States is wrapping up an abnormally dry winter. AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. Stock image of Alstrom Point, Lake Powell. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. a study published in the journal Science said the current dry period in the Southwest is one for the record books, and that its "megadrought-like trajectory" is fueled by natural variability superimposed on . 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. Cookies in the lake reached a disturbing new its companion reservoir, Mead! 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