Lake Powell Glen Canyon Dam water launch delayed resulting from drought

Water ranges are at a historic low at Lake Powell on April 5, 2022 in Web page, Arizona.

Rj Sangosti| Medianews Group | The Denver Submit by way of Getty Photographs

The federal government on Tuesday introduced it should delay the release of water from one of the Colorado River's main reservoirs, an unprecedented action that will briefly deal with declining reservoir ranges fueled by the historic Western drought.

The choice will keep extra water in Lake Powell, the reservoir situated at the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona, as an alternative of releasing it downstream to Lake Mead, the river's other main reservoir.

The actions come as water levels at both reservoirs reached their lowest levels on report. Lake Powell's water stage is presently at an elevation of three,523 ft. If the extent drops beneath 3,490 ft, the so-called minimal power pool, the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electrical energy for about 5.8 million clients in the inland West, will no longer be capable to generate electricity.

The delay is predicted to guard operations at the dam for subsequent 12 months, officials mentioned during a press briefing on Tuesday, and will keep almost 500,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Under a separate plan, officers will also release about 500,000 acre-feet of water into Lake Powell from Flaming Gorge, a reservoir positioned upstream on the Utah-Wyoming border.

Officers mentioned the actions will help save water, defend the dam's capacity to supply hydropower and supply officials with more time to figure out how to operate the dam at lower water ranges.

"We now have never taken this step earlier than within the Colorado Basin," assistant Interior Department secretary Tanya Trujillo told reporters on Tuesday. "However the situations we see in the present day, and what we see on the horizon, demand that we take prompt motion."

Federal officials last year ordered the first-ever water cuts for the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to greater than 40 million people and some 2.5 million acres of croplands within the West. The cuts have principally affected farmers in Arizona, who use practically three-quarters of the available water provide to irrigate their crops.

In April, federal water managers warned the seven states that draw from the Colorado River that the federal government was contemplating taking emergency motion to handle declining water levels at Lake Powell.

Later that month, representatives from the states sent a letter to the Interior agreeing with the proposal and requesting that temporary reductions in releases from Lake Powell be implemented with out triggering further water cuts in any of the states.

The megadrought within the western U.S. has fueled the driest two decades in the region in a minimum of 1,200 years, with circumstances likely to continue by 2022 and persist for years. Researchers have estimated that 42% of the drought's severity is attributable to human-caused local weather change.

"Our local weather is changing, our actions are answerable for that, and we've to take responsible action to respond," Trujillo mentioned. "We all need to work collectively to protect the sources we have now and the declining water supplies within the Colorado River that our communities rely on."