Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch delayed resulting from 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 Publish through Getty Pictures

The federal government on Tuesday announced it's going to delay the discharge of water from one of the Colorado River's main reservoirs, an unprecedented motion that will briefly handle declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The decision will keep more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir situated at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as an alternative of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's different main reservoir.

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

The delay is expected to guard operations at the dam for next 12 months, officials mentioned throughout a press briefing on Tuesday, and can keep almost 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Below a separate plan, officers 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.

Officers mentioned the actions will help save water, shield the dam's capability to produce hydropower and provide officers with more time to figure out the right way to function the dam at lower water levels.

"We've got never taken this step before in the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo advised reporters on Tuesday. "But the situations we see at this time, 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 greater than 40 million people and a few 2.5 million acres of croplands within the West. The cuts have principally affected farmers in Arizona, who use practically three-quarters of the out there 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 considering taking emergency action to handle declining water ranges at Lake Powell.

Later that month, representatives from the states sent a letter to the Interior agreeing with the proposal and requesting that short-term reductions in releases from Lake Powell be implemented without triggering further water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought in the western U.S. has fueled the driest 20 years within the area in no less than 1,200 years, with situations prone to continue by 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 altering, our actions are chargeable for that, and now we have to take accountable action to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "All of us must work together to protect the sources we have now and the declining water provides in the Colorado River that our communities rely on."