Two snapshots, which I will explain in more detail, in all likelihood, over at Substack.
First, the major drought that hit the Colorado River basin from the start of the year on, if not already late last year, was massively exacerbated, in terms of snow water, by the major heat-up in March.
As a result? The Upper Colorado is down to just 25 percent of its median normal on snowpack water equivalent. For people unfamiliar with what this means, normally, there's snow melting in the upper Rockies in May and June that's filling the river, and more importantly, the river's damned lakes behind its damned dams, above all Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam.
There will be little to no such snow this year. What snow is currently left will probably not be bulked up by any major new snowfall before the end of this month. The snow still left was already heated up, as was the surrounding ground, now snow-bare, and therefore it will melt off earlier.
This is going to be problematic, especially for Powell.
How problematic?
EVERY dam has one red-line point that even a few non-Westerners may have heard of: Dead pool, also the title of a book by James Powell about Lake Powell. That's the point where what's left of water in a damned lake is below the outlet holes in a dam. Short of drilling new holes, that means what you have is something that's in the process of becoming a big silty mud puddle, absent major new water input.
Hydroelectric dams have a second red-line point. That's called "power pool."
That's where water in a lake falls below the top of penstock openings in a dam — the penstocks that feed turbines that generate electricity. This is problematic in two ways. One is the loss of electricity itself. The second is that the penstocks must be monitored for things like cavitation, should something like a major flash flood hit the lake and its drainage area and threaten to send lots of water through air-open feedways. Cavitation is what happened to Glen Canyon Dam's emergency water feed holes in the early 1980s when it had no choice but to draw down water as rapidly as possible. Marc Reisner discussed that in "Cadillac Desert."
That leads to our second issue.
Per BuRec, the old Bureau of Reclamation itself, there's a good chance Powell hits power pool by this August, even as the current Colorado River Compact ends later this year and the squabbling over renewal is only heating up. For government bureaucrats to issue a worry this openly pessimistic is huge.
In March, before the big heat-up, BuRec said Powell might hit power pool by this December. With that heat-up, it's advanced that to August. Before the Compact expired and also, for Phoenicians of Aridzona, before the summer expires. That means no more cheap electricity for AC in 105 or 110 F heat.
Per the story, they have two main options. First is opening the gates at Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River, the Colorado's main tributary, as much as possible. Flaming Gorge Reservoir is in northeast Utah and backs into southwest Wyoming. Both states oppose maximum drawdown but probably have little choice. Second is cutting the release of water out of Powell to Mead to the minimum allowable.
But outside agencies say even that won't be enough:
“Those two tools taken together at those levels are not sufficient to prevent Lake Powell from going below 3,500, according to these most recent forecasts,” said Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center.
There you are.
Also, at a water height still slightly above power pool, the story notes, damage to the dam is possible.
BuRec promises another update later this month and you'll get more from me.
Longer term? The "panic button" has always been that one of the two dams has to die, and per private entities like Glen Canyon Institute, Glen Canyon Dam has always been the preferred option in the big picture, though the option vociferously opposed in Aridzona.
On electric juice, about all of Glen Canyon Dam's goes to Aridzona, while Mead's generally goes to California and Nevada. That Glen Canyon juice not only runs the AC in Phoenix, but pushes Central Arizona Project water uphill from the lower Colorado to farms in southern Arizona, and cities in greater Phoenix and Tucson.
BuRec's apparent pessimism is itself a shocker. Per another story from the Salt Lake Trib, the bureau usually pulls its punches on Colorado River water supply issues.
If you live there, like my sis and brother-in-law, really, you should be moving. Really really, you should already have moved.
