Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch delayed as a consequence of drought

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

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Post via Getty Pictures

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

The decision will preserve more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir positioned on the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as a substitute of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's other major reservoir.

The actions come as water ranges at each reservoirs reached their lowest levels on document. Lake Powell's water degree is currently at an elevation of 3,523 ft. If the level drops below 3,490 toes, the so-called minimum energy pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which supplies electrical energy for about 5.8 million clients within the inland West, will not be able to generate electrical energy.

The delay is predicted to guard operations at the dam for next 12 months, officers stated throughout a press briefing on Tuesday, and will hold almost 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Under a separate plan, officers may even release 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, shield the dam's means to provide hydropower and provide officers with more time to figure out how to function the dam at lower water ranges.

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

Federal officials 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 within the West. The cuts have mostly affected farmers in Arizona, who use practically three-quarters of the obtainable water provide 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 motion to deal with declining water ranges at Lake Powell.

Later that month, representatives from the states sent a letter to the Inside agreeing with the proposal and requesting that short-term reductions in releases from Lake Powell be applied 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 at the least 1,200 years, with circumstances 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 local weather change.

"Our climate is changing, our actions are chargeable for that, and we've to take responsible motion to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "All of us have to work collectively to guard the sources we have and the declining water provides within the Colorado River that our communities depend on."