Interior Emergency Plan - Cut Glen Canyon Releases To Legal Minimum, Drain Up To 1/3 of Flaming Gorge Reservoir

The Interior Department announced Friday that it is preparing to take a pair of drastic actions in an effort to head off a water and power crisis along the drought-stricken Colorado River.Interior said it will cut releases out of one of the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Powell, to the minimum amount legally allowed — 6 million acre-feet — between now and October. At the same time, it said, it will release as much as a third of the water currently stored in Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream of Lake Powell over the next year.

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Interior’s announcement came in tandem with the department’s latest projections for water levels at the river’s main reservoirs, which are also crucial for hydropower generation. The “most probable” projections show that levels at Lake Powell would fall below the critical 3,500-foot elevation by August, while the “minimum probable” projections show it dipping below that level by July. Interior has said it will not allow Powell water levels to fall below that threshold since hydropower production at Glen Canyon Dam would cut off at an elevation of 3,490 feet. The Bureau of Reclamation fears that could cause damage to the infrastructure and threaten the ability to make deliveries downstream to Lake Mead, which supplies Arizona, California and Nevada.

The department said in the statement that it expects the emergency actions to increase Powell’s elevation by approximately 54 feet, keeping it above a 3,500-foot elevation through April 2027 — although that will depend on the weather. But reducing releases out of Powell to prop up its water levels stands to instead send water levels at Lake Mead spiraling.

In its statement, Interior acknowledged that the decline at Lake Mead will affect hydropower production there. “Reclamation acknowledges that the proposed reduced releases from Lake Powell will accelerate the downstream decline of Lake Mead, with the potential for up to an additional 40 percent reduction to Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity as early as this fall,” it states. At the same time, Reclamation acknowledged the releases from Flaming Gorge will affect recreational interests in the upstream states. It said it expects the releases to reduce water levels there by 35 feet over the next year, taking it from 83 percent full now down to 59 percent full.

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https://www.eenews.net/articles/interior-unveils-emergency-plans-for-colorado-river/