Cuts to states’ use of Colorado River water are needed to prevent levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell from dropping below a critical point
The precarious status of the Colorado River was brought into sharper focus today with the release of a federal study that determines how the basin’s big reservoirs will be operated in the coming year — and which states will be required to limit their water withdrawals from the shrinking river.
Camille Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, told the states in June that unless they acted the federal government would “protect the system” and apply its own remedy. The states missed that 60-day deadline and remain in fractious negotiations. Each month Reclamation publishes a study that projects reservoir levels in the basin in each of the next 24 months. The August edition of that forecast is important for two reasons. It determines how much water will be released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. It also determines the extent of water cuts in the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, as well as Mexico.
In that scenario, there are severe outcomes by the end of 2023. Lake Powell would be at 3,484 feet — six feet below the point at which hydropower generation stops. Lake Mead would be at 1,010 feet and on its way to an elevation below 1,000 feet by the summer of 2024. That would put it just 50 feet above dead pool, the elevation at which no water flows downstream.
John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies Las Vegas, laid out his concerns in an August 15 letter to federal officials.
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