The Hoover Dam is seeing record-low water levels, a significant and scary development with major implications for water and climate in the entire American Southwest.
Amid drought conditions, Lake Mead’s level last week reached an all-time low of 1,071.56 feet above sea level, leaving it just 37 percent full.
The body of water’s level has been declining since 2000, and has fallen about 140 feet over the past two decades. It comes amid a drought in the Southwest that is the worst in two decades, according to a New York Times analysis.
Long-standing water issues in the West are heightening the challenges posed by more recent effects of climate change.
The Colorado River, which feeds the reservoir, is severely over-allocated, with the demand for its water exceeding the actual flow of the river, according to Kathryn Sorensen, a member of the board of advisors at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute. Scientists have projected the river’s flow may diminish by up to 25 percent in the future, she noted.
Seven states are located in the river’s basin and affected by the Colorado River Compact: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Experts say the overarching problem with water management in the Southwest, and these states in particular, is that existing systems are based on a climate that, because of warming, no longer exists.
The compact was ratified in 1922, and policymakers, including the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have repeatedly called for it to be updated to reflect current circumstances.
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The lower Lake Mead levels will almost certainly affect power in the West as well due to the “tremendous amount” of power production out of the Hoover Dam, according to Felicia Marcus, the William C. Landreth visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program.
On the West Coast, she added, residents have already gotten a preview of these issues.
“We found that certainly in terms of the timing in California during our drought where a variety of hydroelectric facilities just didn’t have the water flow to generate as much energy,” Marcus said.
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NEW: Lake Mead's decline points to scary water future in West https://t.co/RuuDlvcLv8 pic.twitter.com/ZSPJ0iWo7Q
— The Hill (@thehill) June 18, 2021
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