By Arizona Agenda
Federal officials made the first of several long-awaited decisions about the future of the Colorado River on Friday.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is going to stabilize plummeting water levels in Lake Powell by moving water from a reservoir in the northern half of the Colorado River system to Powell and reducing flows of river water from Powell to Lake Mead.
The bureau said these measures will add up to 2.48 million acre feet of additional water to Powell, where decades of drought and overallocation have driven water levels so low that they pose imminent threats to hydropower generation and infrastructural stability at Glen Canyon Dam.
“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” said Andrea Travnicek, assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the parent agency of the Bureau of Reclamation.
The bureau’s announcement comes alongside its monthly publication of 24-month hydrologic projections for the reservoirs of the Colorado River. This month’s study, released on Friday, projects that Lake Powell could drop below 3,490 feet by August of this year without intervention. At that level, water can’t make it into the intakes for hydropower generation, and is forced through river outlet works lower in the dam that aren’t designed for large deliveries — a major infrastructural and legal problem that we discussed earlier this month.
