Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water release delayed attributable to 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 authorities on Tuesday announced it should delay the release of water from one of the Colorado River's major reservoirs, an unprecedented motion that can briefly tackle declining reservoir ranges fueled by the historic Western drought.

The decision will hold more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir located at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as a substitute of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's other primary reservoir.

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

The delay is predicted to protect operations at the dam for subsequent 12 months, officials mentioned during a press briefing on Tuesday, and can preserve practically 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Below a separate plan, officials may also release about 500,000 acre-feet of water into Lake Powell from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir positioned upstream at the Utah-Wyoming border.

Officials said the actions will help save water, protect the dam's skill to produce hydropower and supply officials with extra time to figure out the right way to operate the dam at decrease water levels.

"Now we have never taken this step earlier than within the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo told reporters on Tuesday. "However the situations we see right this moment, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt action."

Federal officers final yr ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to more than 40 million folks and a few 2.5 million acres of croplands within the West. The cuts have largely affected farmers in Arizona, who use nearly 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 government was contemplating taking emergency action to handle 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 further water cuts in any of the states.

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

"Our local weather is changing, our actions are responsible for that, and we have to take responsible motion to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "We all need to work together to protect the resources we have now and the declining water supplies within the Colorado River that our communities rely on."