The megadrought in the US West continues to wreak havoc as Federal officials weigh reducing water deliveries downstream on the Colorado River to prevent shuttering of a massive dam that provides power to millions of people, according to AP News.
Last month, Lake Powell dropped to 3,525 feet (1,075 meters), the lowest level since the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon (located in northern Arizona) more than five decades ago. This has caused officials at the Interior Department to propose holding back water at the dam to maintain the dam’s ability to generate power.
Tanya Trujillo, the Interior’s assistant secretary, warned if Lake Powell drops below 3,490 feet (1,063 meters), it will produce electrical grid uncertainty for the western part of the US, potentially affecting up to five million customers across Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
“We’re in crisis management, and health and human safety issues, including production of hydropower, are taking precedence,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.
The record low water level also comes as researchers have found the US West has been experiencing some of the driest conditions in more than 1,200 years.
Over the decade, drought conditions have worsened. Several major Californian reservoirs have dried up, forcing people to evacuate their boats and causing hydroelectric plants to shutter due to insufficient water supplies to spin turbines.
Reservoirs across California are well below their historical averages (as of Apr. 14).
According to the US Drought Monitor data, the US West is experiencing severe to extreme drought conditions.
New forecasts by federal government meteorologists may suggest drought conditions could deteriorate even more as there’s a 59% chance of La Niña for the Northern Hemisphere through summer. What this would mean is drier conditions.
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When was the last dam built in the west and how many people were living in those states at that time?
I think we should import another 1/4 million illegal aliens each month until all the water in CA is gone. We would then see how strong diversity make us.
Glen Canyon Dam built 1966. US population 60% of what it is currently. Enormous amounts of water is used to irrigate California farms. What could go wrong? Double the population in a desert area, and irrigate the shit out of said desert to grow fruit for people living 3000 miles away. Winning!
Maybe Monsanto can conjure up some drought resistant GMO cannabis seed, in order that all pot growers in Cali can conserve water.
Don’t be so dumb, anonymouse. The water used to irrigate the Central Valley in California comes from the Sacramento River. Instead of letting the farms have it, they dump it in the ocean. What a waste of water, huh? Growing food, what a waste of resources. Lake Powell is only midstream on the Colorado. They can fill it up if they wanted. Instead they release it downstream. Do you really think the Rockies are short on snow?
The Glen Canyon dam feeds water into the Colorado. The Colorado provides around 60% of rural and urban water to Southern California. That is around half of what is drawn from the Sacramento, but it is very significant. Cut 60% of the water to Southern Cal and see what you get.
The biggest user of water in CA: alfalfa. Last time I checked, humans don’t eat alfalfa. And over half a million tons a year of it is shipped to ….. China.
So please, don’t be so dumb. Watering a desert is a bad idea. Putting 45 million people into California is a mistake.
Congratulations on the dumbest comment of the day.
Maybe you should ask how much water is spent for green grass front yards and swimming pools in Las Vegas and Phoenix…
Should there be large cities in deserts?
Now tell us again
“Enormous amounts of water is used to irrigate California farms.”
Cue Sam Kinison.
Better yet invoke stupid laws restricting everything needed to keep people alive and comfortable in a world of fires, lawlessness, and corruption.
Just bus everyone crossing the border to LA
What about the water waste from dams. Lake Mead loses 1.2 million acre feet to evaporation per year; Lake Powell, 560,000 acre feet. Those two lakes’ evaporation (1 acre foot = 326,000 gallons) is 587 billion gallons of water a year. That’s into the atmosphere. Where does it go?
For the past few months, it has fallen on W TN as rain.
What about Lake Mead? How about the Ogallala aquifer and others? That’s a big chunk of the country that’s almost out of water. When will we start seeing ‘water refugees’ moving to the few areas that actually have any left?
major wildfires in the west would cause migration quickly
There is no global or national fresh water shortage. There are regional shortages only in those places that were short of water BEFORE millions of people moved there. There probably will be people leaving these areas, but that won’t cause shortages if they move to places with plentiful water. If people keep demanding plentiful, cheap water when they move to fucking deserts then they’ll get what reason demands they get.
Play stupid, poorly planned games, win stupid, poorly planned prizes.
I don’t remember if it was Boone Pickens or Ross Perot who wanted to build a water pipeline from MN to W TX. They anticipated the water shortage and wanted to monetize it for their benefit.
I traveled Utah returning from the Oregon coast in fall
2019 thinking, yeah, trout fishing in the fall in Utah. It sucked. I should have researched better. I had no intention of fishing Lake Powell, only drove to that area , and man, it literally sucked. Not just because it is a desert area, so we expect some dry stuff, peeps out there got major issues with water. TY
Local corruption – as usual – allows for too much demand on local water supply. I could tell you stories.
But if you wanna catch trout in the fall in Utah LMK.
Say more should I return. Very nice trip except the trout expectation. Came through Cedar City and did the canyons.
Hey, it’s not like this and Hoover dam power all those useless electric cars. Queue the Nelson Muntz laugh from the Simpsons.
So move to Texas. I guess so? I use to drink beer with a long time friend, contemplating world issues as beer drinkers might do. The friend’s take was that Texas would grow by leaps and bounds population wise because Texas had an abundance of water. This was beer talk 80’s. Anyway…
Yet, the developers are still having a field day building new houses in what amounts to the desert of CA. Has anyone given any thought to the lack of a water supply?
Water is a given, right? To say otherwise goes against the grain of the GOP, you know, tree huger stuff? If no water WTF does it matter , GOP or non GOP?
So, looking at the drought map, how is government going to help? I hope they do, trillions of $ , whatever government can do. Don’t come to Texas. We are filled up. God Bless, yet what did the Lord tell the Israelites in Exodus about sojourners?
California’s reservoirs are below historic levels… but there’s still enough water for the MILLIONS of illegals the latest batch of Left-Wingers dinner belled into the state… Better than that, they jump onto welfare and get their water for free… Free to them…
…If there’s enough water for the illegal aliens, I’ll be watering my grass all summer long, thank you…
Cool. We gonna water Saint Augustine lawns in Texas heat in Highland Park , Dallas ,Texas cause we gonna eminent domain land for Marvin Nichols Reservoir along the Sulphur River, North Texas. Peeps, just take the $$$, you are fighting a losing battle, population growth needs water to drink not to mention the thirst of the lawns. You can sell lots of minnows for fishing from newly created marinas not to mention $$$from recreational water sports. It’s inevitable. Sorry. Blame it on “progressives”.
Maybe vote harder? Stop them illegals? Or move?
That really must stink. Sorry for ya.
What we need is more corn for ethanol. Oh, wait, that is going to happen. Thanks, Joe. Corn is water intensive, but who cares about the Ogallala anymore. Drain that sucker! It once was the largest body of fresh water in the world. Now, she’s destined to dry up unless the glaciers come back and then melt.
All of that corn going to ethanol might be better used for corn meal to feed the masses in the coming food shortage. Sorry, I forgot corporate corn production needs a LOT of the fertilizer that will not be available. No food and no fuel because it MUST contain at least 10% ethanol.
It seems more like the era of cheap, plentiful water is over. Water can be made available wherever it is wanted if enough money is thrown at the problems. You just need to do stupid things like build enormous pipelines and desalination plants. Unfortunately, we don’t have a strong enough economy or population to handle all the simultaneous disasters being created at this time through dumb government policies. We’re lucky if we can solve one crisis at a time.
There are places where the era of cheap plentiful water will likely never be over. I don’t understand how people don’t understand that there are other places where there never was and never could be any lasting era of cheap, plentiful water. If you don’t want shortages and high prices for water, don’t live in a desert.
Or do. Show up to an oasis in a desert that replenishes at a certain rate; drain it; then bitch about the “worldwide potable water shortage”.
All the government agencies are on board with covering the ‘Public Lands’ in the West with solar panels. They are permitting ‘Our lands’owned by us the taxpayers as fast as they can for a solar fields. Joe Blow has made ‘free money’ available for ‘green infrastructure’ . Being somewhere in the Solar Expansion ‘food chain’ is the ‘Dot Com” job for Federal workers. The war on hydro has been ongoing for year by ‘Greenies’ . This article quotes ‘government sources’ didn’t mention snow pack levels, Spring run-off has barely began. Interesting ‘Greenies’ willing to cover the deserts with solar panels to push their electric vehicle agenda.
Feds Weigh Next Emergency Scam. FIFY
Boy, oh boy. Look at all that blue surrounding the mitten.
Some desert retards have suggested in the past to tap into that, and
run a pipeline westward, as if it belongs to all the States in the country.
Yeah, well Michiganders and surrounding States that share the Great Lakes,
besides Canada, …might have something to say about that.
But I wouldn’t put it past this current administration to divide us further by suggesting
such an endeavor.
{After closing down Keystone, and Wretched Shitsmore and her AG trying to shut down line 5 that pumps oil safely underneath the Mackinac Straights}
Look for the Great Lakes communities to wave back at the left coast and D.C.
They just won’t be using all four fingers when waving.
Or standing up with their pants up.
When people downvote something like that you have to wonder what kind of living hell they inhabit.
Sorry about their Dads.
Ingenious solutions to complex problems are one of mankind’s greatest gifts.
Great video.
Is there any way we could get a chart of population growth in the areas served by that reservoir in the same time frame?
I bet there’s a correlation.
Human beings are curious creatures. They want to live in the land of perpetual sunshine and warm weather as well as plentiful water- like the areas downstream from this reservoir- without considering that they are asking for something that never was and can never be.
California: the leader of climate change progress. Also California: has to steal everyone’s water because it is a sub-Mediterranean climate zone that is also semi-arid.
The utter hilarity of California and its “environmental” concern never ceased to amaze me when I lived there.
Let them all fucken die of thirst. All the shits they take can be dropped in Lakes Powell and Mead to help displace the water levels.
Eat shit and die commies.
ZFG, out.
P.S. thermodynamics invalidates all their bullshit green power alternatives. Suck on that you fucken tits.
Want to learn about water in the West? Get a copy of “Cadillac Desert”.
Right after the Civil War Congress hired John Wesley Powell to go out there and find out what it was like. He did and told them; they never listened to his recommendations.
The absurdity surrounding the mistakes assumed to be true in the 1920s when the Colorado River Pact was agreed to by seven states shows what happens when Government happens.
If what was announced last year is true (that Arizona’s water allocation this year is to be severely reduced) then Arizona agriculture will be a thing of the past. No more almond trees and alfalfa in the desert.