Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water release delayed as a result of drought

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

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Put up through Getty Photos

The federal authorities on Tuesday introduced it can delay the discharge of water from one of the Colorado River's main reservoirs, an unprecedented action that will temporarily handle declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The choice will preserve extra water in Lake Powell, the reservoir positioned at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as a substitute of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's different primary reservoir.

The actions come as water levels at both reservoirs reached their lowest levels on record. Lake Powell's water stage is presently at an elevation of three,523 ft. If the extent drops under 3,490 ft, the so-called minimum power pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electrical energy for about 5.8 million clients in the inland West, will now not be able to generate electricity.

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

Officials stated the actions will help save water, defend the dam's potential to produce hydropower and provide officials with extra time to figure out the best way to function the dam at lower water levels.

"We now have never taken this step before in the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Division secretary Tanya Trujillo told reporters on Tuesday. "But the situations we see in the present day, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt motion."

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

In April, federal water managers warned the seven states that draw from the Colorado River that the federal government was contemplating taking emergency action 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 implemented without triggering additional water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought in the western U.S. has fueled the driest twenty years in the area in not less than 1,200 years, with circumstances likely to continue via 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 responsible for that, and we have now to take responsible motion to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "We all need to work collectively to guard the sources we have now and the declining water supplies within the Colorado River that our communities rely on."