Lake Mead drought || Deposit photo
By Kaely Monahan || The Arizona Republic
The news reports are morbid. Bodies are being discovered in the newly visible muck of Lake Mead. But perhaps the most terrifying reality about the water situation involving the Colorado River is not the past; it’s the future for all of us. The water is drying up.
In early August, the U.S. Interior Department announced a water shortage that will trigger cuts in the water supply in Arizona and other parts of the Southwest. A United Nations environmental program said Lake Powell and Lake Mead had reached “dangerously low levels.”
The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the nation’s water projects, gave the seven states and 30 tribes that use the Colorado River eight weeks to come up with a plan to conserve more water.
The goal was to conserve an extra 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water, thereby stabilizing the rapidly dwindling reservoirs.
However, no plan was reached, and the clock keeps ticking.
