Lake Mead threatens to reach “dead pool”
It was the dawn of the Atomic Age. Isaac Asimov had published his Foundation series. Everything was atomic-this and atomo-that. Man had split the atom, destroyed entire cities with it, and sailed beneath North Pole ice in the USS Nautilus, the world’s first operational nulcear-powered submarine.
But the U.S. had lost its monopoly on the atom in 1949. School children practiced “duck and cover” drills in anticipation of Soviet atomic bombs. I watched science fiction movies on black and white TV after school. All the promise and fears of the time reduced to reels of aliens and radiation-spawned monstrocities. Or into post-apocalyptic fiction such as “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” set in the American southwest.
Nowadays, some of those apocalyptic tales seem less science fiction than southwestern science fact (Los Angeles Times):
The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs stand nearly three-quarters empty, and federal officials now say there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam in two years.
That dire scenario — which would cut off water supplies to California, Arizona and Mexico — has taken center stage at the annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas this week, where officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government are negotiating over how to decrease usage on a scale never seen before.
Outlining their latest projections for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s two largest reservoirs, federal water managers said there is a risk Lake Mead could reach “dead pool” levels in 2025. If that were to happen, water would no longer flow downstream from Hoover Dam.
Um, that would be, as they say, bad.
A “23-year megadrought supercharged by global warming” has left water supplies along the Colorado River in crisis. The western drought has Lake Powell in bad shape as well. Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, tells the conference “it might be too late to save the lakes.”
Negotiations between seven western states dependent on the river for water supplies have failed to reach an agreement to cut back on water usage in the already overtaxed Colorado basin. The Times reports that “voluntary cuts states and water agencies have proposed remain far from the federal government’s goal of reducing water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year — a decrease of roughly 15% to 30%.”
A federal August deadline for reaching an agreement for voluntary cuts came and went without one. The Biden administration might have imposed unilateral cuts but did not, undercutting the pressure on state authorities to act.
The Anasazi had experience with this sort of thing. But they aren’t available for consultations.
John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, warns:
“One way or another, physics and Mother Nature are going to dictate outcomes if we don’t come up with some solutions,” Entsminger said. “I would like every water user on the Colorado River to recognize that the 21st century has substantially less water than the 20th century. And all of the institutions we built in the 20th century need to be adjusted — in months, not years — in order to face the reality of less water for every user, in every sector, in every state.”
This is not the sort of crisis some clever scientist resolves in the nick of time in the third act.
“If you can’t get water through Hoover Dam, that’s the water supply for 25 million Americans,” John Entsminger said.
Across the West, drought has already led to a record number of wells running dry in California, forced huge swaths of farmland to lie fallow and required homeowners to limit how much they water their lawns. This week, a major water provider in Southern California declared a regional drought emergency and called on those areas that rely on Colorado River water to reduce their imported supplies.
The problems on the river have been building for years. Over the past two decades, during the most severe drought for the region in centuries, Colorado River basin states have taken more water out of the river than it has produced, draining the reservoirs that act as a buffer during hard times. The average annual flow of the river during that period has been 13.4 million acre-feet — while users are pulling out an average of 15 million acre-feet per year, said James Prairie, research and modeling group chief at the Bureau of Reclamation.
Perhaps Finch‘s robot, Jeff, and dog, Goodyear, would find use for an abandoned Hoover Dam.
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