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 Put up via Getty Pictures

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

The choice will hold more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir positioned at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as an alternative of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's other main reservoir.

The actions come as water levels at both reservoirs reached their lowest levels on file. Lake Powell's water level is at the moment at an elevation of three,523 feet. If the level drops below 3,490 toes, the so-called minimum power pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electricity for about 5.8 million clients within the inland West, will now not have the ability to generate electrical energy.

The delay is anticipated to protect operations at the dam for subsequent 12 months, officials said during a press briefing on Tuesday, and can hold practically 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Underneath a separate plan, officials may even launch about 500,000 acre-feet of water into Lake Powell from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir located upstream at the Utah-Wyoming border.

Officials said the actions will help save water, protect the dam's capacity to supply hydropower and supply officials with more time to figure out how one can operate the dam at lower water levels.

"We have by no means taken this step before within the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo told reporters on Tuesday. "But the circumstances we see right this moment, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take immediate 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 within the West. The cuts have mostly affected farmers in Arizona, who use nearly three-quarters of the accessible water provide to irrigate their crops.

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

Later that month, representatives from the states sent a letter to the Inside agreeing with the proposal and requesting that non permanent reductions in releases from Lake Powell be applied without triggering further water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought in the western U.S. has fueled the driest twenty years within the region in at the very least 1,200 years, with circumstances more likely to continue through 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 answerable for that, and we've got to take accountable motion to reply," Trujillo stated. "All of us must work together to guard the assets we have now and the declining water provides in the Colorado River that our communities depend on."