Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water release delayed resulting from drought

Water ranges are at a historic low at Lake Powell on April 5, 2022 in Page, Arizona.

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Put up by way of Getty Photos

The federal government on Tuesday announced it is going to delay the discharge of water from one of the Colorado River's main reservoirs, an unprecedented motion that can quickly tackle declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The decision will maintain extra water in Lake Powell, the reservoir situated at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as an alternative of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's other major reservoir.

The actions come as water levels at each reservoirs reached their lowest levels on report. Lake Powell's water level is at present at an elevation of 3,523 ft. If the level drops under 3,490 toes, the so-called minimum energy pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electrical energy for about 5.8 million customers within the inland West, will now not be capable to generate electrical energy.

The delay is expected to protect operations on the dam for next 12 months, officials mentioned during a press briefing on Tuesday, and will hold almost 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Under a separate plan, officers will even release about 500,000 acre-feet of water into Lake Powell from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir located upstream on the Utah-Wyoming border.

Officials mentioned the actions will help save water, defend the dam's capacity to provide hydropower and provide officers with more time to figure out methods to function the dam at decrease water levels.

"We've never taken this step before within the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo instructed reporters on Tuesday. "However the circumstances we see at present, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt action."

Federal officials last yr ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to more than 40 million individuals and a few 2.5 million acres of croplands within the West. The cuts have mostly affected farmers in Arizona, who use practically three-quarters of the available water supply to irrigate their crops.

In April, federal water managers warned the seven states that draw from the Colorado River that the government was contemplating taking emergency motion to handle declining water ranges at Lake Powell.

Later that month, representatives from the states sent a letter to the Interior agreeing with the proposal and requesting that non permanent reductions in releases from Lake Powell be carried out with out triggering further water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought within the western U.S. has fueled the driest twenty years in the region in at the least 1,200 years, with situations likely to continue by 2022 and persist for years. Researchers have estimated that 42% of the drought's severity is attributable to human-caused climate change.

"Our local weather is changing, our actions are liable for that, and we've got to take accountable action to reply," Trujillo said. "We all need to work together to protect the sources now we have and the declining water supplies in the Colorado River that our communities depend on."