Federal forecasters issued a jaw-dropping 24 percent cut to projected flows for the Colorado River on Monday, an outlook that’s likely to force the Trump administration to take drastic action to keep water flowing across seven Western states this year.
NOAA’s “special forecast” now projects just 1.75 million acre-feet of flows into Lake Powell during the spring and summer runoff season. That’s a steep drop from the projections issued just two weeks ago and represents only 27 percent of average, according to senior hydrologist Cody Moser.
It comes as the states are brawling over how to divvy up the diminished supplies from the West’s most important river. After they missed a Feb. 14 deadline from the Interior Department to strike a new agreement, the administration is now preparing to step in and craft its own plan for operating the system of reservoirs and canals that support water to 40 million people from Wyoming to the U.S.-Mexico border beginning in October.
But the Interior Department will have to make critical decisions well before then because of this year’s meager supplies. The Bureau of Reclamation’s latest projections for reservoir levels — which don’t include the latest NOAA forecast — show that Lake Powell’s declining elevation could lead to crisis levels as soon as August.
