For Star subscribers: Lakes Powell and Mead, the depleted symbols of the Colorado River's water crisis, are unlikely to ever fill again, several water experts say.
Tony Davis Lakes Powell and Mead, the depleted symbols of the Colorado River's water crisis, are unlikely to ever fill again, several water experts say.
People are also reading… That's highly unlikely or impossible, with the river carrying about 20% less water, on average, each year than it did during the 20th century, Udall and Kuhn said. Miller noted that Jennifer Pitt, a longtime Colorado River activist for the National Audubon Society, has recently concluded that"if we had normal snowpack conditions for three straight years and also zero water use, we'd refill the majority of the Upper Colorado Basin reservoirs." Miller based his six- to eight-year estimate on Pitt's logic, but"knowing we are not ever going to not use water.
Cutting water useThe reservoirs are in bad enough shape that the bureau is studying two alternatives for curbing consumption of river water by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet a year. Such a cut, starting next year, would be equivalent to up to nearly 30% of current levels of use.
The river carried 21.6, 16.6 and 15.8 million acre-feet a year, respectively, from 1997 through 1999. All three flows were well above the Colorado's average, annual natural flow of 15 million acre-feet during the 1900s — an average that has fallen sharply since then. Since 2000, the Colorado has never had even two consecutive years of above-normal flows, federal records show.
"More importantly, I cannot envision any set of circumstances ever where once these reservoirs went to half full that anyone would want to endure the pain of 4 million acre-feet a year cuts," Udall said."Historically, this whole system has been designed to push out as much water as possible every year."
The mid-'80s were part of an unusually wet era on the river that stretched from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Since then, the Colorado River Basin, along with the entire Southwest, has suffered through its worst drought in 1,200 years. In fact, 2018 had the lowest precipitation across the river's Upper Basin of any year since 1895, when records started being kept. The 23-year period ending in 2022 also had the lowest 23-year average precipitation on record, he said.
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