Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch delayed due to drought

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

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Publish via Getty Photographs

The federal authorities on Tuesday announced it can delay the release of water from one of many Colorado River's major reservoirs, an unprecedented motion that can briefly deal with declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The choice will maintain more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir positioned at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, instead 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 document. Lake Powell's water stage is currently at an elevation of 3,523 toes. If the extent drops under 3,490 toes, the so-called minimum power pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electricity for about 5.8 million customers within the inland West, will now not have the ability to generate electricity.

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

Officers mentioned the actions will assist save water, protect the dam's capability to produce hydropower and provide officers with extra time to figure out function the dam at decrease water levels.

"We've got never taken this step before in the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo informed reporters on Tuesday. "However the conditions we see immediately, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take immediate action."

Federal officials final yr ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to greater than 40 million people and some 2.5 million acres of croplands in the West. The cuts have largely 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 deal with declining water ranges at Lake Powell.

Later that month, representatives from the states despatched a letter to the Inside agreeing with the proposal and requesting that momentary reductions in releases from Lake Powell be applied 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 area in at the least 1,200 years, with conditions more likely to proceed 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 now we have to take accountable action to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "All of us have to work collectively to guard the resources we have now and the declining water supplies in the Colorado River that our communities depend on."