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.
The department said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with the governors of the seven Western states that share the waterway for a second time Friday to discuss the decision.
“I am grateful for the Governors and their teams working diligently to find a solution to the complex challenges created by these unprecedented drought conditions which require immediate action,” Burgum said in a statement.
The move underscores the dire conditions facing the West’s most important river as a hot, dry winter has shriveled the region’s snowpack just as the current rules governing water-sharing among the states are set to expire.
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.
The Upper Colorado River Commission — a federal-state entity representing the upstream states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — is set to discuss the plans at a Tuesday afternoon meeting. It said in a statement Friday that it has reached an agreement with Interior to refill the water being released out of Flaming Gorge.
Interior said it intends to finalize the emergency plans next week.
