For Star subscribers: Reclamation is for the first time legally signaling its intent to make major cutbacks in water deliveries to the Lower River Basin state, including Arizona.
Tony Davis The Bureau of Reclamation is for the first time legally signaling its intent to make major cutbacks in water deliveries from Lake Powell to Lake Mead and the Lower River Basin to protect the reservoirs that are on the edge of collapse.
As they have said before, bureau officials said last week cuts of this scale are needed to prevent Mead and Powell from falling to catastrophically low levels that would jeopardize their ability to deliver water to cities and farms and to generate electricity from their respective dams. They serve power to 8.5 million people in the Lower Basin states and 5 million in the Upper Basin states. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming comprise the Upper Basin.
The reason the scenarios turn dire so quickly now is that for the first time, the bureau analyzed impacts to river flows and reservoir levels if we repeat the very dry period of the early 2000s. By 2005, Powell dropped 100 feet in elevation, and lost half its total stored water from 2000 levels. That the states and Mexico are taking more out of Mead than what's sent there each year is at the root of the Colorado's problems. The river has been running a supply-demand deficit for many years.
"One of the things they are saying is that under climate change, we don’t know what the most probable future is. We know that with climate change, the future will be different from the past," Fleck said. "What Reclamation did was challenge everyone to come up with a way we don’t go off the cliff," Utah State's Schmidt said.
"But I think at this point the federal government doesn’t have any other choice but to save the system and leave the states in the dust because they haven’t been helpful," Weisheit said.
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