Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch 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 Post via Getty Images

The federal government on Tuesday announced it can delay the release of water from one of the Colorado River's main reservoirs, an unprecedented action that will quickly address declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The choice will keep 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 different major reservoir.

The actions come as water levels at each reservoirs reached their lowest ranges on record. Lake Powell's water level is presently at an elevation of 3,523 feet. If the extent drops under 3,490 ft, the so-called minimal energy pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which supplies electrical energy for about 5.8 million customers within the inland West, will no longer have the ability to generate electricity.

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

Officials mentioned the actions will help save water, defend the dam's means to supply hydropower and provide officers with extra time to figure out how you can operate the dam at decrease water ranges.

"We now have by no means taken this step earlier than within the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo informed reporters on Tuesday. "However the situations we see today, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt motion."

Federal officers final yr ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to more than 40 million individuals 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 available 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 considering taking emergency motion to handle declining water levels 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 carried out without triggering additional water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought in the western U.S. has fueled the driest two decades in the region in a minimum of 1,200 years, with situations more likely to proceed by way of 2022 and persist for years. Researchers have estimated that 42% of the drought's severity is attributable to human-caused climate change.

"Our climate is changing, our actions are accountable for that, and we've to take accountable action to reply," Trujillo mentioned. "We all have to work collectively to protect the assets we have now and the declining water supplies in the Colorado River that our communities rely on."