Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States, is careening toward unprecedented low levels this year after a historically poor snowpack failed to replenish its water, scientists and water experts have warned. The crisis adds urgency to stalled negotiations over how to conserve a water source relied upon by tens of millions of people in the US Southwest.
Current Water Levels and Projections
The 185-mile-long Colorado River reservoir currently stands at about 23% of its capacity, or roughly 5.6 million acre-feet. While Lake Powell fell below that level for a few months in 2023, those lows occurred in winter, the reservoir's natural low point. Spring runoff then raised the level to 9.6 million acre-feet by June, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation. This year, however, after a winter with historically low snowpack in the mountains and a record-breaking March heatwave across the Southwest, water levels barely rose this spring. Even after supplemental releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream, Lake Powell ended June below the annual low it hit the previous month, and it could keep dropping. Except for those few months in 2023, the reservoir has not been this low since June 1965, two years after US authorities began filling it.
“What’s unique this year is that there was no recovery at all,” said Jack Schmidt, director of Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. “What we expect to happen is that Lake Powell will go to unprecedented low conditions some time this fall.” He added, “Water management in the Colorado River system is starting to get terribly complicated.”
Impacts on Hydroelectric Power and Water Supply
With the spring runoff season over, the lake’s water level is projected to keep dropping for the next eight months. The consequences could be wide-ranging, imperiling hydroelectric power and injecting more uncertainty into already contentious negotiations over how to divide an increasingly unreliable water supply used by 40 million people across seven states, dozens of tribal nations, and two countries. Lake Powell is just 37 feet above the level at which its electricity-generating turbines begin to fail, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation. Nearly 6 million households and businesses rely on power from the Glen Canyon Dam.
Failed Negotiations and Possible Federal Intervention
For more than two decades, Lake Powell and its downstream sister reservoir, Lake Mead, have dwindled in capacity, even as users have cut back. Negotiators from the seven US states with legal rights to Colorado River water—California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—have so far failed to reach an agreement on conservation. The US Bureau of Reclamation could resolve the impasse by imposing its own plan for cuts as soon as next month. Experts say the system is careening toward a long-feared breaking point as the US West’s climate warms and dries.
“In the 21st century, the ultimate cause of the problem is declining runoff,” said Schmidt. “There’s less water in the system. It’s caused by a warming climate, period.”
Innovative Solutions by Cities
Facing increasingly dire challenges, many Southwestern cities are taking bold action to secure alternative water supplies. Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said, “Cities have a whole lot of tools that they’re going to deploy. Because cities are going to be differentially impacted by the Colorado River shortage, they’ve developed a voluntary framework for helping each other out.” Phoenix, one of the most prominent cities whose users can no longer rely on the Colorado River, is investing in recycling sewage effluent into drinking water. Similarly, San Diego announced a plan last month to use surplus water from its desalination plant to strike a deal with Arizona and Nevada, allowing those arid states to buy some of San Diego’s unused Colorado River water rights.
Expert Calls for Reducing Demand
Brad Udall, a water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, said paying users to leave the system is exactly what the reservoirs need. “There are too many straws in the glass,” Udall said. “Rather than having an annual fight over who gets what, let’s remove some straws… One way to do that is the American way – let’s buy ‘em out.” He noted that the Colorado River crisis is perhaps the first time climate change is “forcing a rethink of 100 years of law and policy and rules and interstate compacts and international treaties around a water source.”
Deadpool Fears and Future Outlook
The gloomiest predictions have raised fears that falling levels could condemn Lake Powell to “deadpool,” a state where the reservoir drops so low that gravity can no longer carry water downstream. However, Schmidt said such a catastrophe is unlikely, as authorities would intercede with forced cuts and releases from Flaming Gorge. Still, experts expect Lakes Powell and Mead to remain largely depleted for the foreseeable future. “We have control over how bad it gets,” said Porter. “But the only thing we can do to keep it from getting bad is to take less water out.”
