Colorado River

[mojavesue]

But my question was more about why they are letting Mead drop to unproductive levels (no power generation).


Lake Mead isnt in danger of losing power generation. Lake Powell is. The Bureau just installed low lake level turbines on the generators at Hoover Dam. I believe they can now generate power down to around 950 ft elevation? The bottom line for the past 20 years is the river does not flow enough to cover demands. We've been running at a deficit for many years. Honestly, the water system has been very robust. With the drying out, when the mountains do get snowpack, it has been warming too much too fast for the snowmelt to make it to the rivers. When the CRC was done back in the 1920s, managers had no idea how many people would be out here. John W. Powell knew though that it could never sustain a major population. I think in all of SoCal there were just over a million people, Phoenix had around 100k and Vegas had just 5k! Now, including people in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado there are 60 million people living in the west.

 

[ncbill]

I've lived in Las Vegas since the mid 90s. The last time Lake Mead was close to full was I think in 99. The past 20 or so years have been really dry across the west. Las Vegas had the foresight to put in a 3rd straw at a lake elevation of 880 ft. So Las Vegas could literally be the last user of the lake if it got to that point. The first intake was exposed just last week as the elevation has reached around 1050. Full pool I believe is 1225 ft. The problem is the Colorado just doesnt have the volume it once did to satisfy the demands. California and Arizona get the majority of the lower basin water and a big portion of that goes to irrigation farming. The Bureau of Reclamation and the federal government is going to have to get aggressive with reducing allocation. There was a possibility that Powell would drop below the level to produce power so they are releasing water from Flaming Gorge in Wyoming to supplement it. Just a temporary move to buy some time though. I believe they are also holding some water back in Powell so that will affect Mead. The Bureau estimates Mead elevation next year at around 1025 feet. The snowpack has not yielded the same water in recent years due to the extreme drying of the atmosphere. So instead of normal runoff, it dries and evaporates or gets absorbed by the soil. I do agree with COcheesehead that water rates are really low to promote real conservation. There will be some hard decisions made soon otherwise I think we're in for some not good outcomes.

One study I read said the West was unusually wet for the first half of the 20th century so everybody started assuming those higher levels of precipitation were the norm.

Yeah, agriculture will shift but there will be word-wide impacts...when Australia shifted land previously used to grow rice to vineyards because of drought conditions the world-wide supply of rice dropped & those in poorer Asian countries suffered the price increases, while we here in richer Western countries got more decent, affordable wine options.

 

[Turbo29]

Agriculture uses ~80% of the water from the Colorado River

"If you eat carrots or lettuce in the winter, chances are the Colorado River irrigated those crops. The Colorado River irrigates 3.2 million acres within the Colorado River Basin itself and 2.5 million acres outside of the basin, places like California’s Imperial Valley. That’s a total area nearly the size of New Hampshire."

Coming Together for the Colorado River Learn how farmers and ranchers are working to keep more water in the river


Interestingly, when agricultural land is used for housing development there is drop in water usage. An acre of homes uses much less than an acre of farming.

 

[mojavesue]

I read a story not long ago about the Southern Nevada Water District invested millions of dollars with the California water districts to help build a huge water reclamation operation to reuse reclaimed water. That would allow California to take less water from the Colorado and help with the lower basin system shortage.

The city of Las Vegas has really done an excellent job with conservation. We use less water today than we did 20 years ago. The city pays a lot of money to get rid of grass. Its now on a big push to get grass out of areas that are around apartment complexes and along sidewalks. All of the water you see at the Bellagio fountains is reclaimed water. Also, since Las Vegas has a natural drainage to Lake Mead, the state of Nevada gets credit for water sent back to the lake.

The biggest water users though are in Imperial Valley in California. The big impact on the country will be winter food production.

 

[rodi]

Cheap water in Colorado... NOT cheap in San Diego. Unlike LA and north, we get our water from the Colorado. Latest water bill was over $120 for a month. We do not have lawn - use drip irrigation for fruit trees and veggie garden. We use gray water where we can. No pool.

The city is putting in a toilet to tap capital improvement project but that won't come online for another 3 years for phase one. This is to help with our dependence on the Colorado. (It also addresses our sewage problem - which is why we aren't just doing desalination).

 

[skyking1]

Wow $120.
My brother put in dwarf tall fescue in Central Washington where it's very dry and hot. It does not use much water at all, nor does it spread.
It's a pretty good alternative to zero scaping.

 

[audreyh1]

I cant speak for the colorado river but I have seen archeologists find fossils of sea creatures in mountains before. Guess water levels have been adjusting for millions of years.

This is common. Dead sea creatures build up on the ocean floor. A lots of sedimentary rock comes from ocean and lake beds. When plates collide this stuff gets scraped off and collects on the overriding plate. When mountains form, also due to plate collision, land is lifted high up to form mountains (the Himalayas are a good example). The rock layers in the mountains can come from many sources, including sedimentary rock formed underwater and containing sea fossils. Sea creature fossils at tops of mountains were lifted up there.

 

[MarieIG]

Desalination for farmland close to the coast?

 

[JoeWras]

Possible, but expensive and resource intensive.

 

[zinger1457]

Looks like things may get even worse for Lake Mead, at least in the short term. Lake Powell officials are taking emergency steps to increase the water levels in Lake Powell to keep hydropower generation going. Those steps will likely decrease the water going to Lake Mead.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/us/lake-powell-emergency-steps-drought-climate/index.html

 

[Turbo29]

‘It feels like a dying reservoir’: Deltas of sediment are pushing into Glen Canyon as Lake Powell disappears

 

[Sunset]

Agriculture uses ~80% of the water from the Colorado River

"If you eat carrots or lettuce in the winter, chances are the Colorado River irrigated those crops. The Colorado River irrigates 3.2 million acres within the Colorado River Basin itself and 2.5 million acres outside of the basin, places like California’s Imperial Valley. That’s a total area nearly the size of New Hampshire."

Coming Together for the Colorado River Learn how farmers and ranchers are working to keep more water in the river


Interestingly, when agricultural land is used for housing development there is drop in water usage. An acre of homes uses much less than an acre of farming.

But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

 

[Turbo29]

But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

You have to eat the houses too to get the fiber.

 

[SecondAttempt]

Lake Mead isnt in danger of losing power generation. Lake Powell is. The Bureau just installed low lake level turbines on the generators at Hoover Dam. I believe they can now generate power down to around 950 ft elevation?

Bingo! I was using an old value for Minimum Power Pool of 1050 feet, which the level is within 5 feet of. With 200 more feet of margin I can see why they are making the decisions they are.

 

[ncbill]

But I don't think we will get as much fiber from eating people as we do from vegetables

Soylent green is people!

 

[Chuckanut]

‘It feels like a dying reservoir’: Deltas of sediment are pushing into Glen Canyon as Lake Powell disappears

I've wondered what John Wesley Powell would think of the dam, and the lake named after him.

“There is not enough water to irrigate all the lands,” he remarked at a Los Angeles congress of farmers and developers in October 1893. “I tell you gentlemen you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not enough water to supply the land.”

 

[Turbo29]

When the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation when Glen Canyon Dam was built, Floyd Dominy, was asked about the fact that all of the sediment in the river would fill the reservoir with silt in a few hundred years he replied, "“We will let people in the future worry about it.”

 

[SecondAttempt]

Looks like things may get even worse for Lake Mead, at least in the short term. Lake Powell officials are taking emergency steps to increase the water levels in Lake Powell to keep hydropower generation going. Those steps will likely decrease the water going to Lake Mead.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/us/lake-powell-emergency-steps-drought-climate/index.html

I think for the most part "Lake Powell officials" are also "Lake Mead officials" who all work for the Bureau of Reclamation and look to laws, contracts, and convanents to make their decisions.

 

[SecondAttempt]

Which is worse, the loss of hydropower or significantly less food production from the loss of irrigation? A hydropower loss will be regional, but fallow fields will ripple across the country's grocery stores on top of existing inflation. Is another dustbowl situation coming? I sure hope not, but we'll find out this summer.

This is really a philosophical question.

If people get hungry or have to pay much more for their lettuce they may think more about why and what they can do. This turns the Colorado Basin issues into a national problem and that may be a good thing.

I live in Hawaii where my water falls from the sky and collects from my roof into my tank. Most of my food is from local suppliers. It would be easy to not care about this. And my original question was more academic than having a concern.

But having lived in the southwest most of my life, I can't help but be aware and concerned about water issues.

 

[Pellice]

I've wondered what John Wesley Powell would think of the dam, and the lake named after him.

Chuckanut, what great quotes! I knew that water was always a contested resource in the West, but did not know that even the builders of the infrastructure foresaw the limits.

It's telling to me that 7 or 8 states came together and agreed on the latest restrictions and measures. That would never happen were the situation not desperate - they'd be fighting each other in the courts.

A friend of mine, a native Californian living here in the East, was considering a move to Arizona recently. I implored her to think about the water, but she was surprisingly nonchalant - "Oh, I'm from California, we're used to restrictions."

I wonder if any polls or studies have been done to ask whether water concerns have factored in decisions of people - and, more especially, businesses (which carry people) - to refrain from moving to, or in fact to move out of - the Southwest.

 

[LA_Newsboy]

Just a thought:


Forty million people in several western states are not going to dry up and blow away. The water distribution problem will be tackled and solved. And it IS a distribution problem, not a water problem.


Anyone want to chime in on piping water from where they have it and don't want it to where they don't have it and want it...and will desperately need it soon?

 

[Delawaredave5]

Are there any damn questions ?....

 

[RobLJ]

While you don't want to mention the word climate change, I'm sorry but the West is in a mega-drought. While mismanagement may be part of the issue, the long-term issue is the drought.
As you say, Rocky Mountain snowlevels are 86% of normal, (many areas like ski areas are well below that) so releasing water upstream will help, until they drain the upstream lakes. Here in Reno, the snow pack is about 65%, depending on where you measure. We also are in.......long-term drought; the pines in the higher Sierras are screwed and unless we get more moisture in the next year or two, fires like the big Calder fire that threatened Lake Tahoe communities will be the "norm" from now on. Luckily, I'm under less of a threat since we are lower down with fewer trees here on the foothills of Peavine Mountain and close to the Truckee on the west edge of Reno.



But Powell and Mead and the Colorado Rivershed are screwed, longerterm, unless the mega-drought reverses. I have no magic 8ball for this, so I can't help you. We had a good snowyear here in Northern Nevada 3 years ago that helped out here and in the Cali Sierras, and I'm hoping for a good year next year. Longer-term, many of the pines here where we hike are doomed. It is what it is.

I don't want to start a debate about climate change. I'm trying to ask a focused question on something I've observed that does not seem to make sense.

I have been watching the water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell for the last couple of years. I lived most of my life in Arizona and the last "crisis" I remember was in the early 80s when there was serious worry of Glen Canyon Dam (Lake Powell) overtopping.

Now it seems that Lake Mead is less than 5 feet of "minimum power pool," the level at which it cannot generate power. Lake Power is only about 30 feet above that level. If water levels drop as they have in the past year, both dams will stop generating power in the next year. By itself that is not a crisis because the US has plenty of generating capacity.

But both downstream lakes/dams, Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu, are nearly full. So why not just let those lakes drop a little to fulfil our water delivery obligations to Mexico and California? Why not just close the valve on Lake Mead, take the power generation hit, and let is rise a little?

The most recent plan I read is to release about half a million acre feet from a reservoir in Wyoming. But, while that may be one action to take it really does not solve the problem. Rocky mountain snowpack this year is 86% of average so we can expect low river flows.

Part of me suspects a manufactured crisis or simply gross mismanagemnt of water flows to keep the lower lakes full while critically endangering Mead and Powell.

Any insights? Am I missing something?

Edit: Damn keyboard makes typos!

 

[RobLJ]

I'm sorry, it is a water problem, until the drought reverses, if it reverses. And yes you can build pipes from the Great Lakes or East Texas or desalinate, if you really want to spend the money.

After this rant, I agree with you, there are a lot of things to do, that will piss off conservative farmers in the Central Valley (who are the political power base), like cutting down the almond trees or stopping completely alfalfa and cotton growing around Phoenix, westward, and in the Cali Central Valley. These are water-intensive agriculture use that .... don't make sense in the dry West; economic incentives and water rights/law prop these uses up. This would prioritize urban/suburban use and devastate agriculture, the center of the Central Valley economy, but it can be done. Do we have the will and political power to do so? I doubt it, until the taps are running dry, which is in the next decade.

I grew up in Western Oklahoma where farmers for two generations pumped from the great Oglalla Aquifer--until it pretty much ran dry in Southern Kansas and Western Oklahoma. Farmers knew what was happening, since pumps had to go 100, then 200, then 300, then 400 feet down, but they didn't stop pumping or simply denied reality--until it ran dry on them (the Aquifer is still running further North).

I learned in high school in the 70's that our ability to ignore reality and the tragedy of the commons is extremely high, if there is a financial incentive to continue business as usual, and there are great incentives to do so, until everything breaks.

Just a thought:


Forty million people in several western states are not going to dry up and blow away. The water distribution problem will be tackled and solved. And it IS a distribution problem, not a water problem.


Anyone want to chime in on piping water from where they have it and don't want it to where they don't have it and want it...and will desperately need it soon?

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

And yes you can build pipes from the Great Lakes ... if you really want to spend the money.

It is not just the money: https://www.in.gov/dnr/water/lake-michigan/great-lakes-compact/