Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch delayed attributable to drought

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

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Publish through Getty Photographs

The federal authorities on Tuesday announced it is going to delay the discharge of water from one of many Colorado River's major reservoirs, an unprecedented action that may temporarily deal with declining reservoir levels fueled by the historic Western drought.

The choice will maintain more water in Lake Powell, the reservoir positioned on the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, instead 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 levels on file. Lake Powell's water level is presently at an elevation of 3,523 feet. If the level drops below 3,490 feet, the so-called minimum power pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electricity for about 5.8 million prospects within the inland West, will no longer have the ability to generate electrical energy.

The delay is expected to guard operations on the dam for subsequent 12 months, officials said throughout a press briefing on Tuesday, and will hold nearly 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Beneath a separate plan, officers will also 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 potential to produce hydropower and provide officers with more time to figure out function the dam at decrease water ranges.

"We've never taken this step before in the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo advised reporters on Tuesday. "But the situations we see as we speak, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt action."

Federal officials final yr ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to greater 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 almost three-quarters of the out there 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 considering taking emergency action to deal with 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 momentary 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 area in at least 1,200 years, with situations likely to proceed by 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 responsible for that, and we have to take accountable action to reply," Trujillo mentioned. "We all must work collectively to guard the resources now we have and the declining water supplies within the Colorado River that our communities rely on."