The folks who make the decisions on what to do with these resources don’t GAF about politics. It says right there in the story they’re gonna try and store as much as they can. What else can they do?
https://www.ktnv.com/news/drought-c...water-levels-at-lake-mead-visitors-are-unsure Recent snowfalls will be helpful but will not refill the lakes completely.
The 2023 accumulated snowpack on the Grand Mesa, just east of us is 66 inches, 140% of "normal". It's now beginning to melt and streams of melted snow are rushing into creeks flowing into reservoirs. I was up on the Mesa last week and it's a sight to see. Countless, tens of thousands small rivulets of water are pouring out of sloping gound like streams of sweat pouring out of the pores of an overheated body. This water is headed to the Colorado, either directly or through the Gunnison, which merges into the Colorado about 3 miles east of where I live. Water levels in local reservoirs have been lowered to receive the Mesa's melting snow in an effort to prevent flooding in villages on the Mesa. It's going to be epic. Colorado River averages were set - give or take - a hundred years ago when the officials made the distribution pacts for the states receiving a share of the river's water. Unfortunately the rainfall levels around that time were above average and the disbursements since then have ben based on that faulty over estimation. It's been a while since I read about that agreement. I'll see if I can find more information.
I don't think New Mexico got nearly as much water as central California did. So, I think some areas will be in good shape for a year or two, but others will continue to have water problems within weeks or months. The water was not distributed evenly with the rainfall, and the ability to store that water also varies greatly from region to region.
I'm finishing up our 10 day trip across southern Utah and there are ungodly amount of water and snow left for this time of year. As an example, the Narrows (slot canyon) in Zion NP is usually open this time of year but is running around 850cfs instead of 100cfs. Snow pack levels are still a similar ~800% higher than normal. They don't expect the Narrows to open until late June or July. The Wasatch near Salt Lake City are completely buried. All this historic snow and my understanding is this will only help Mead and Powell a little bit. We can't count on consecutive winters like this to fix this problem. We have to address consumption.
They need to rewrite the rules for the Colorado withdrawal allotment to be a % of the flow that year. Original allocations were done during wet years and never adjusted
Recent warmer temperatures and melting snow have raised Lake Powell 5 feet. With projections showing a 50-foot rebound coming, Lake Powell resumes Grand Canyon’s experimental floods For the first time in five years, high volumes of water are gushing from the drought-depleted Lake Powell, replicating the spring floods that would naturally occur were the Colorado River not dammed at Glen Canyon. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Monday opened the gates at Glen Canyon Dam allowing up to 39,500 cubic feet per second, or cfs, to pour into the river channel at Lees Ferry, sending a flood-stage surge of water through Grand Canyon. That’s like the contents of 27 Olympic swimming pools a minute spouting through the bottom of the dam. “These experiments are really designed to recreate habitat and the physical attributes that would have existed downstream from the dam, but for the existence of the dam,” said Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah (CRAU), at last’s week board meeting. “In this case, what I’m talking about is building up sandbars using sediment that has accumulated.”... .... That is about to change drastically in the coming weeks as the upper Colorado basin’s snowpacks, which are 157% of normal, melt and flow into Powell and upstream reservoirs. The lake level is projected to climb by more than 50 feet this year, according to Bart Leeflang, the CRAU’s hydrologist. _________________ Rainfall the last 4 months here in the Grand Valley is 1.15" above normal.
I just looked at the map and it Lake Powell is a long way from Lake Mead. How long does the water take to get there? I know it will eventually get there, but everything released will not get to Lake Mead as the river elevation change will absorb some of it.
It’s there, you can see the spike on the chart. Lake Mead Water Level the lake is defying predictions, just last month the estimate was that it would be at 1040 feet by month end, it’s almost 10 feet over that. Still a long way to go though.
Probably 1-3 weeks depending on flow. Between the two reservoirs is the Grand Canyon. Canyon ecosystems will suck up some water, but it's negligible. I would guess that many orders of magnitude more water evaporates from the surface of the lakes than is "lost" in transit.
It was a high pressure release, it was only a few days. If you look at the chart I posted above Mead has already spiked over a foot. Lake Mead to rise one foot by Sunday after federal ‘high flow’ water release
https://www.ktnv.com/news/nevada-ca...ater-cuts-to-protect-lake-mead-colorado-river cuts agreed to, but it’s a proverbial drop in the bucket. lake levels at Powell and Mead are still rising.
story seems to be missing a major element is as much as it is a temporary agreement based on the states receiving billions from the feds sounds good but reality is they agreed to ehse cuts with plans to use the same volume of water but pull it from their reservoirs which got filled with this wet winter and they are going to get paid to use the alternate source. devil is in the details and the details are the feds are just paying them off to try and save Lake Mead now and kicking the can down the road while doing nothing to reduce demand Colorado River deal: Southwest states reach landmark deal to stave off water crisis | CNN Three Southwest states announced Monday they have struck a historic deal to cut billions of gallons of Colorado River water usage over the next four years, about half of which would be completed by next year, in an effort to stave off a crisis at the nation’s largest reservoirs. The deal between California, Arizona and Nevada agrees to cut at least 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026 – around 10% of the states’ Colorado River allocation – water that would otherwise be used to irrigate farms, generate hydropower or feed municipal drinking water systems. (A single acre-foot of water is enough to cover one acre of land a foot deep.) The water cuts would be split up among farmers, tribes and cities who are working with the federal government on short-term payments in exchange for water savings. Most of the cuts would be compensated with at least $1 billion in federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. About 1.5 million acre-feet of that water is set to be cut by the end of 2024. Personally think they should have pushed through with the EAS they had and forced the cuts permanently. The federal government signaled support for the lower basin deal on Monday by agreeing to withdraw a dramatic environmental analysis it outlined last month that would have forced the three states to cut nearly 2.1 million additional acre-feet of their Colorado River usage in 2024 alone. At the time of its release, top federal officials said publicly they hoped their proposal would spur discussion among states who have spent the past year sparring over cuts.
Lake Mead is up 15 feet from it's lows last July. It looks like it is still rising. Lake Mead Water Level
Here is something surprising: our thirst for fresh water is so great that humans have pumped enough groundwater out of the earth to change the tilt of the earth. It is a small change (1.7 inches per year), but apparently measurable. The two greatest areas for pumping groundwater are apparently the western U.S. and northern India. I'm surprised that China is not mentioned, as the Beijing area has essentially pumped out the largest or second largest aquifer in the world (they now pump water through 6'-dia. pipes from the Yang-tze River, I believe). The U.S. is almost finished pumping out the Oglalla Aquifer (north Texas to South Dakota). I don't understand it completely, as "tilting to the east" is a meaningless concept when talking about the entire earth. Humans pump so much groundwater that Earth’s axis has shifted, study finds | CNN
By their votes (politicians) ye shall know them. DeSantis certainly isn't making an issue about the environment, and as the governor of an environmentally fragile state, you'd think he'd be at the forefront of this issue.
