Posted on 06/14/2022 4:27:33 PM PDT by American Number 181269513
As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change, the Colorado River’s reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce risks of supplies reaching perilously low levels, a top federal water official said Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said during a Senate hearing in Washington that federal officials now believe protecting “critical levels” at the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require much larger reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The needed cuts, she said, amount to between 2 million acre-feet and 4 million acre-feet next year.
For comparison, California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year, while Arizona’s allotment is 2.8 million acre-feet.
The push for a new emergency deal to cope with the Colorado River’s shrinking flow comes just seven months after officials from California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take significantly less water out of Lake Mead, and six weeks after the federal government announced it is holding back a large quantity of water in Lake Powell to reduce risks of the reservoir dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate electricity.
Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels. Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Sorry Tony but this particular drought is real.
In my part of the Colorado River Basin the drought has exasperated the cyclical bark beetle culling of old trees and right now about 90% of our forest is dead.
Hope you are able to get out of LA once in a while - come check it out.
PS - Sacramento River Basin and north is not where this article is about. But I do agree with you about that issue.
Did t I just read that they are having floods in Yellowstone that are washing up roads? I know Yellowstone is not Colorado, but somebody’s getting rain out there
From where? It’s up hill if your pipeline originates below the highest dam elevation of 3700ft.
Other than that the Green River - which becomes the Colorado - is already downhill to Powell. As well as the San Juan.
Good luck with this. I think most who don’t live in a place like Las Vegas look at it as a farce - The idea of unchecked growth in that climate. In the end you have no choice when the river runs dry, so get busy living or get busy dying
Where do you want to get the water from for said pipeline???
Check this site out - it is so cool! You can follow any stream or river in the US upstream or downstream.
I thought of that, too. Best I can make out, a bit father west and it could have hit the headwaters if the Colorado. The Yellowstone is a tributary of the Missouri so the flood waters are flowing the wrong way, from our point of view
BobL wrote:
“
100 years ago there was a group of non-human aliens who built the superstructures in California that harnessed and transported water from the mountains, to people near the coast, and could maintain a population twice as large as existed then.
50 years ago, the population started approaching the capacity of what the non-human aliens built, and rather than expanding the superstructures, the people of California decided that they’d figure out a way to live with ever-tightening water.
It was their choice...and now they pay.
“
The guys that did the documentaries about Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam would not agree with you as to who built those hydropower emplacements.
They were began during the Great Depression.
Soon to be renamed the Colorado Trench.
As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by liberal politicians…
There. Fixed it.
Four Later, Thanks
They might look like aliens now seeing as what they did would be deemed impossible now.
Here in the state of Washington the governor and a senator (Inslee and Murray) just came out with some “research paper” on what an economic boom would be created by tearing down 4 to 6 dams along the Columbia river!
Their “calculations” show that increased revenues due to increased salmon fishing would offset the other losses.
What a couple of idiots. Farming, energy and ports would go away - but we would reclaim it in salmon dinners.
Washinton and Oregon are getting lots of rain...80 year record broken...we sell power to Cali...and water, probably
ACG is NOT a theory. It is a HYPOTHESIS.
It’s a fraud.🤔
I don't think anyone denies that, but the effects on Westerners might be significantly less if other dams had been built in the last half century while the population doubled.
I guess Yellowstone Park is no longer in the West?
Canada? Lake Michigan? Oil pipelines work from Canada to Texas and some of that us uphill. California uses aqueducts and pipelines to provide southern California water over a mountain range. It’s just engineering folks.
Still, the bigger the lie and the more often it is told, it becomes truth.
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