Posted on 06/04/2022 9:31:32 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
Lake Mead is a reservoir is Nevada and Arizona, relied upon for example by the city of Las Vegas for drinking water. Last year, its water level was significantly lower than previous years. This year, it’s even lower. This is dramatic…
If the trend does continue for the next two decades as it has been going on for the past two, it seems like things aren’t looking optimal for the Colorado river, the largest water reservoir by capacty in the US, and the Hoover Dam hydroelectric power plant.
Lake Mead fell about 7 feet in May. I expect June will likely be close to the same. Lake Mead is now way below 1,050 ft. in elevation, at which more than half of the turbines will not be able to fully work…
If water levels continue to drop, Hoover Dam would cease generating electricity when the water level falls below 950 feet (290 m) and the lake would stabilize at a level of 895 feet (273 m) when the water reaches the lowest water outlet of the dam.
Below 1,050 feet (bottom of the efficiency curve for the current turbines) more water is needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. Such low depths increase the rough zones for the turbines—the generating range in which vibration and cavitation threaten to damage the unit. At extremely low lake levels, like the ones Mead is fast approaching, those rough zones—which usually occur in a narrow production band at medium capacity—could expand to fill the entire generating range, making the turbines vulnerable at any speed. But this unprecedented scenario would be a mystery even to the staff of the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam.
(Excerpt) Read more at strangesounds.org ...
Nobody will build anything to draw from the Big Lake. Or any lake that is International waters.
Now, if you want to talk about the lower Mississippi? That right there might be a solution.
The best solution is to cut the allotment to CA.
They got all the water they need just to the west of them.
Forgive my ignorance:
Is the larger problem w/ Meade and more draw or less intake?
Obviously, it’s both, but I’m curious as to which is the larger cause here for Meade and Lake Powell.
California, Nevada, and Arizona are about to discover mass migration east or die.
That’s right. Once the water level goes below the Las Vegas water intakes, it’s over.
Not a problem. In Vegas, most people prefer alcohol.
Vegas just put online it’s third straw they tunneled under one of the deepest parts of the lake and came up out of the bottom like a bathtub drain. They then put a 100+ food intake structure to keep the inlet out of the bottom waters and into the “heart” of the deep waters. The top of that intake structure is at 860 feet above MSL the height that Lake meadgoes into dead pool were not a single drop can be sent down river is at 895 MSL that means there is 35 feet of water or the intake at that point that is all Las Vegas’s that 35 feet holds about 2 million acre feet of water which is just over 6 years of water for Las Vegas this assumes they won’t cut into the shaft of that intake structure and let water in at lower elevations and also that no water comes down stream after dead pool is reached. The actual bottom of lake mead is around 820 feet MSL. At no point in the Colorado’s history has the flow been under 1 million acre feet per year once dead pool is reached only Vegas can draw water out and since they use less than their allocated 300,000 acre feet in the dead pool the inflows are three times what they use Vegas will never be out of water once they drilled that lower intake shaft.
Following.
Won’t be the first time a drought has run people out of the SW states.
That, and convincing my daughters to limit their showers to 30 minutes instead of an hour.
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That’s funny because having had three daughters, I know it’s true. They’re all adults now and paying their own water bills.
I need to remember to ask them all if they still use a minimum of three towels per shower.
Never read that anywhere. Thanks.
Thanks Hootowl99. A millrace is just an artificial channel built to move water at a very low but steady rate downhill, to make the water supply to the device regular and consistent regardless of the activity of the river (short of complete loss of water). The height of the water from which electricity is generated is the issue at Lake Mead.
The natural-color images above were acquired on July 6, 2000, and July 3, 2022, by Landsat 7 and Landsat 8. The detailed images below also include a view from Landsat 8 on July 8, 2021 (middle). The light-colored fringes along the shorelines in 2021 and 2022 are mineralized areas of the lakeshore that were formerly underwater when the reservoir was filled closer to capacity.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150111/lake-mead-keeps-dropping
Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time. As of July 18, 2022, Lake Mead was filled to just 27 percent of capacity.
The largest reservoir in the United States supplies water to millions of people across seven states, tribal lands, and northern Mexico. It now also provides a stark illustration of climate change and a long-term drought that may be the worst in the U.S. West in 12 centuries.
The low water level comes at time when 74 percent of nine Western states face some level of drought; 35 percent of the area is in extreme or exceptional drought. In Colorado, location of the headwaters of the Colorado River, 83 percent of the state is now in drought, and the snowpack from last winter was below average in many places.
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