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As of Monday, California’s snow water equivalent is 199% of normal for this date (January 9), according to the California Department of Water Resources. The Southern Sierra is 222% of normal. The Central Sierra is 201% while the Northern Sierra/Trinity is 173%. The snowpack outlook is also promising along the crucial Colorado River basins which feed Lake Powell and Lake Mead and is Southern California’s primary source of drinking water. Snow water equivalent in the Rockies generally range from 117% to 176% of normal.

Citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi south of the Old River Control Structure don’t need all that water. All it does is cause flooding and massive tax expenditures to repair and strengthen dikes. The best solution would be for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build an aqueduct from the Old River Control Structure on the Mississippi to Lake Powell, fill it, and then send more water from there down the Colorado to fill lake Mead. About 4.5 million/gals a second flow past that structure on the Mississippi. As mentioned, New Orleans has a problem with that much water anyway,...

Memorial Day boaters captured the scene on video as a massive rockfall crashed into the waters of Lake Powell. The dramatic rockslide happened on the Utah side of the lake – the second largest reservoir in the country – where water levels have continued to plunge due to the unrelenting drought conditions gripping much of the West. Mila Carter, who shot the video, said she was heading to Antelope Point Marina with her husband, Steve Carter, when they noticed rocks and sand falling off the cliff near the entrance of Warm Creek. They stopped the boat and started taking pictures...

Following the U.S. Department of the Interior’s call to limit water deliveries from Lake Powell, Arizona’s top water official warned of an impending water crisis that could affect the drinking water for millions of people. “This is really getting to (be) a health and safety issue… the health and safety of those who want to turn on the tap and have water,” Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s director of water resources, told Phoenix’s 12 News on Sunday. He said Arizona and other Western states have until the end of the week to respond to an emergency request by the federal government to...

The megadrought in the US West continues to wreak havoc as Federal officials weigh reducing water deliveries downstream on the Colorado River to prevent shuttering of a massive dam that provides power to millions of people, according to AP News. Last month, Lake Powell dropped to 3,525 feet (1,075 meters), the lowest level since the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon (located in northern Arizona) more than five decades ago. This has caused officials at the Interior Department to propose holding back water at the dam to maintain the dam’s ability to generate power. Tanya Trujillo, the...

The date is Feb. 9, 1997, and the man responsible for one of the most egregious environmental follies in human history is sitting at a restaurant in Boyce, Virginia, with the leader of the movement seeking to undo his mistake. Of the hundreds of dams Floyd Dominy green lit during his decade running the Bureau of Reclamation, none are as loathed as his crown jewel, the Glen Canyon Dam. In 1963, Dominy erected the 710-foot (216-meter) tall monument to himself out of ego and concrete, deadening the Colorado River just upstream of the Grand Canyon, drowning more than 250 square...

ESCALANTE, Utah - In the early 1960's, the nation's environmental movement cut its baby teeth on a fierce battle to stop construction of dams along the Colorado River. Two proposed dams were never built, but Glen Canyon dam, located in an unprotected area, was completed in 1963. Over the next 17 years, water backed up for 186 miles, forming Lake Powell and inundating Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of side canyons. The defeat was deeply felt. David Brower, who was executive director of the Sierra Club, called the death of Glen Canyon the greatest disappointment of his life. Edward...

Two major lakes in the Colorado River Basin that operate as one huge reservoir to supply millions of people with water are drying up

The Navajo residents of Page, Ariz., have gotten to the point where they openly worry their modest rush hour may end altogether. The rush hour consists of only a few hundred cars carrying 520 people out to the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), heading down a windy road to the coal-fired power plant, which is dramatically positioned on a ridge a mile from the shores of Lake Powell, the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States. The Navajo coal plant’s lease is set to expire in 2019, pending complex negotiations aimed at extending operations until 2044. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)...

The mud-choked Colorado River flows through the dry lakebed of northern Lake Powell in a new satellite image released yesterday (May 22). Western drought has left this reservoir on the border of Utah and Arizona less than half full, the satellite image captured on May 13 reveals. As of May 21, the lake was at 42 percent of capacity, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) data.

Summer visitors to Lake Powell will experience water levels last seen ten years ago, according to a new report by the Bureau of Reclamation. The report predicts water levels to be 3,665 feet above sea level by mid-August, a level not seen since 2001. In the last two months, the nation’s second largest man-made lake has added 28 feet of water elevation with half of the snowpack still left to melt. This excess snowmelt is creating more areas to explore at Lake Powell, America’s favorite houseboating destination. ... Lake Powell’s rising water level is a result of the long and...

Book Review: Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West ( University of California , 2008). By Wayne Lusvardi American newspaperman Louis Malcolm Boyd once wrote “there are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.” Recently, the world has begun to learn about the dealings of the first type but we still seem to be living in a bubble about the second. In this case, the second type is not a table pool player but James Lawrence Powell’s apocalyptic new book, Dead Pool: Lake Powell , Global Warming, and the Future...

SNIPPET: "The fire was reported about 11:23 p.m. Thursday by someone who called 911 reporting flames coming from the covered slips at the Halls Crossing Marina, a remote part of Lake Powell on the Kane/San Juan County border. National Park Service firefighters from all over responded, some flying up from Page, Ariz., to help. Photographs provided to the Deseret News showed boats engulfed in flames and burned out hulls floatingon the water. There were more than 150 boats moored at the marina — firefighters saved about 130 of them." SNIPPET: "Anyone with information on the fire is asked to call...

A trip to Lake Powell could cost you a bit more if an Arizona city succeeds in annexing a portion of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. National Park Service officials worry the measure could affect hunting within the park and send ripples through the agency, setting a precedent for how other national parks are managed. In order to reap the revenue from a proposed 3 percent sales tax at the Wahweap and Antelope Point marinas and other concessionaires within the park, the city of Page, Ariz., wants to annex 21,000 acres of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Glen...

Compromise: The accord would divvy up the basin's water during dry years Representatives of the seven Colorado River Basin states announced Friday they have reached a tentative agreement about how the river will be managed during water shortages. The deal culminates a year of sometimes stormy negotiations between upper basin states Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, plus California, Arizona and Nevada in the lower basin over how the river's precious resource should be shared. The stakes are enormous. Interior Secretary Gale Norton late in 2004 gave the seven basin states until February to submit a joint proposal for an...

Recently Backpacker magazine published an article in support of making Glen Canyon and Lake Powell a National Park. Lake Powell is already designated a National Recreation Area so this is a suspicious action to say the least.

Hi Everyone: My name is Peter Flax; I'm Backpacker's executive editor.

For four short years I have been watching the developing and in most cases already existing problems with water management boil. It seemed that during the height of the drought that maybe the Federal Government would step in and demand action or it would take action, that does not look likely now with a good water year under our belts. This was in fact the case last year as Sec Norton promised intervention if the States did not resolve the current conflict, that of usage allocation. Most would agree that the pie was cut into to many slices originally, which...

Prayers needed from you precious, prayerful Freepers My family and I are in need of prayer..Would you all make a little time to seek the Lord in a request from my family? We are broken hearted today. I never, ever thought we would be so attached to a little dog like we are this one...Especially my daughter. she's having a real hard time. Over the weekend our family pet (Maxie the Chihuahua) was removed or let out of our hotel room by someone who has access to key cards... We had put up a sign a do not disturb hanger...

Letter to ABC RE: Nightline April 11th In a supreme effort to raise money GCI has slipped between the sheets of the liberal media giant ABC. The only question is who is using who? Or are they both mutually beneficial piles of manure used to fertilize their joined liberal cause? ABC has thrown it's obvious one sided news reporting behind the effort to drain Lake Powell with it April 11th broadcast on "Nightline". A broadcast in which only one side of the story was told, a style that ABC is well known for. The viewers where treated to some very...