Wyoming looks to store, divert more water as Lake Powell dries up

[TexasTowelie]

As Lake Powell dropped to its lowest-ever level Friday — a decline that has forced dam tenders to unexpectedly release 125,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir — Wyoming stood behind five projects that could divert tens of thousands more acre-feet from waterways in the troubled Colorado River Basin.

Powell’s surface elevation dipped to 3,555.09, lower by 12 hundredths of an inch than the previous post-completion nadir of April 8, 2005. The new benchmark is “probably worth noting,” Wayne Pullan, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Region 7 director, said in a press call Wednesday.

“The fact that we’ve reached this new record underscores the difficult situation that we’re in,” he said.

Friday’s mark amounts to a 150-foot drop in the storied Utah-Arizona reservoir over 24 years, a decline that’s spurred action to preserve irrigation flows, millions of dollars in hydropower revenue and myriad necessities for 40 million people in the West.

As the BOR began its “emergency” release of 125,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on July 15, a coalition of downstream water users called for a moratorium on new dams and pipelines.

Read more: https://www.wyofile.com/wyo-looks-to-store-divert-more-water-as-lake-powell-dries-up/

[brewens]

1. Ken Burns The Dust Bowl claimed the giant aquifer that provides irrigation water to

much of the southern plains had about 15 years left. It's glacial melt from the last ice age that does not replenish. So that came out several years ago. I wonder where we're at with that now?

We know long severe draughts like we've never experienced in the west are inevitable. They have thousands of years of proof of that from tree rings. Of course anyone aware of that hopes it's hundreds of years away, but what if we're already in one?

I'm in north central Idaho. I can walk out of here and be at a buddies cabin in the woods in an hour. Most years, but not this year. It's been several years since we had a normal summer in the NW.

I used to schedule my vacation time for the middle of August every year to go on a float trip or camping. You have to be out of your mind to do that now. You'll be in smoke the whole way on the river and no camp fires.

I'm wanting to say to some people who are telling themselves things will go back to like they were, what makes you so sure? Wanna buy a cabin in the woods right now? Better off buying a boat. Oh, well there might be a problem with that in some places now too.