Tag Archive for: Glen Canyon Dam

US Projections on Drought-Hit Colorado River Grow More Dire

/in , , /by /AP News

The U.S. government released projections Wednesday that indicate an even more troubling outlook for a river that serves 40 million people in the American West.

The Bureau of Reclamation recently declared the first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, which means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will get less water than normal next year. By 2025, there’s a 66% chance Lake Mead, a barometer for how much river water some states get, will reach a level where California would be in its second phase of cuts. The nation’s most populated state has the most senior rights to river water.

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Hydropower Levels Under Careful Watch as Drought Ravages the West

/in , , /by /Powerby Sonal Patel

Intensifying drought conditions in California and historically low water levels at the Oroville Dam on Aug. 5 forced the state’s Department of Water Resources to shut down the 644-MW Edward Hyatt Power Plant—the fourth-largest energy producer of all California’s hydroelectric facilities.

While the current drought is affecting 95% of the West, it is bearing down severely in California and in the Colorado River Basin. Multiple reservoirs monitored by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are “substantially” affected. The federal agency reported on Aug. 8 that at least six of its 44 major reclamation reservoirs—including Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam—have now fallen to their lowest storage values in the last 30 years.

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Lake Powell Level About to Hit a Historic Low as West’s Water Crisis Deepens

/in , , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Brian Maffly

Lake Powell will soon hit its lowest level since Glen Canyon Dam started trapping the Colorado River’s water in 1963 — even with emergency releases of water from reservoirs upstream. The Bureau of Reclamation announced Thursday that the lake elevation will soon drop below 3,555.1 feet above sea level, the record set in 2005, back near the start of a 20-year dry cycle plaguing the Colorado River Basin.

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Extreme Actions Underway to Ensure Glen Canyon Dam Can Continue to Generate Power

/in , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Brian Maffly

The growing crisis on the Colorado River came into sharper focus last week when the Bureau of Reclamation began emergency releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to shore up Lake Powell’s declining levels, now at historic lows.

The move will bolster Powell’s level by 3 feet in hopes of preventing it from dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electrical power, according to the agency’s Upper Colorado regional director Wayne Pullan.

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The Colorado River is Shrinking. Hard Choices Lie Ahead, This Scientist Warns

/in , , /by /Science Magby Erik Stokstad

On a spring morning in 1996, then–Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood at Glen Canyon Dam, a concrete bulwark in Arizona that holds back the Colorado River to form Lake Powell. During a live broadcast on the Today show, a popular national TV program, Babbitt opened valves to unleash an unprecedented experimental flood into the Grand Canyon just downstream. As onlookers applauded, water gushed from gaping outlet pipes. Babbitt called the experiment, which was testing one way of restoring Grand Canyon ecosystems damaged by the dam, the start of “a new era” in environmental management.

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Reduced Water Flow Prepped at Lake Powell

/in , /by /Arizona Daily Sunby Adrian Skabelund

Scientists and boatmen with the United States Geological Survey are preparing for a busy week on the Colorado River as engineers at Glen Canyon Dam prepare to reduce the water flowing out of Lake Powell substantially.

In order to conduct maintenance on the concrete apron downstream of the dam, engineers will be limiting the water that runs through the dam’s turbines starting Monday and continuing through the rest of the week.

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Opinion: Drain Lake Powell, Not Colorado Farms

/in , /by /Pagosa Daily Postby Daniel P. Beard & Gary Wockner

Experts agree the amount of water in the Colorado River basin has declined because of drought and climate change, and that population growth is fueling demand for water higher and higher. One result is the level of Lake Powell in Arizona, behind Glen Canyon Dam, has steadily declined and is now at 43% of capacity.

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Upper Colorado River Drought Plan Triggered for First Time

/in , , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colorado)by Luke Runyon

Increasingly bleak forecasts for the Colorado River have for the first time put into action elements of the 2019 upper basin drought contingency plan.

The 24-month study released in January by the Bureau of Reclamation, which projects two years of operations at the river’s biggest reservoirs, showed Lake Powell possibly dipping below an elevation of 3,525 feet above sea level in 2022. That elevation was designated as a critical threshold in the agreement to preserve the ability to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam.

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The Rancher Trying to Solve the West’s Water Crisis

/in , /by /Politicoby Annie Snider

Paul Bruchez’s family has ranched cattle in Colorado for five generations. And twice in his lifetime, his generation has nearly become the last. The first time, it was the city of Denver that squeezed them out. By the 1990s, when Bruchez was still in high school, the city’s fast-growing suburbs had swept north and totally surrounded their roughly 2,000 acres in Westminster.

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Glen Canyon Dam Tapped for Emergency Water Releases to Meet California Power Demands

/in , , /by /AZ Centralby Erin Stone

For the first time in nearly two decades, the federal government tapped Glen Canyon Dam for extra power generating capacity this weekend, triggering emergency water releases as heat waves persisted across the West.

As temperatures hit records in California, power providers turned to sources in Nevada, Utah and Arizona to cope with the surge in demand across its electrical grid.

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