High good, low bad, Mead elevations 1999-2009
NOT everything went down during the Noughties. While federal Bureau of Reclamation records show that the elevation of Lake Mead, the major “lower basin” Colorado River reservoir serving Arizona, California and Nevada, fell more than 117 feet, the population of the US states served by Mead rose. The US Census Bureau estimates that the population of the driest state in the country, Nevada, climbed 32.3%, while Arizona’s increased 28.6% and California’s 9.1%.
If Lake Mead were a financial institution, people might, stress on might, question the logic of outgrowing one’s resources. As John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal pointed out after reading the first version of this post, Mead is at its lowest elevation since it was first filled in the 1930s.
But the spendthrift lower basin states such as Nevada have …
High good, low bad: Mead in November
High good, low bad: Mead in October
WHEN the Colorado River’s water was divided by treaty in the 1920s, Nevadan negotiators never imagined that Las Vegas would need more than 300,000 acre feet of water a year (compared to Arizona’s 2.8m and California’s 4.4m). The population of Clark County was roughly 2,500. Its largest city, Las Vegas, a railroad town, already had groundwater and native springs, if not the semitropical climate promised in this Chamber of Commerce brochure, date unknown.
The once ebullient springs of Las Vegas are now dry, Clark County is 90% dependent on that 300,000 acre feet of water from Lake Mead, the reservoir containing Colorado River water impounded behind Hoover Dam. The population of greater Las Vegas is roughly two million and cities such as San Diego, Phoenix and Los Angeles also vie for water from water in Lake Mead.
Meanwhile, Mead is shrinking. …
High good, low bad: Mead in September
COMPLETION of Hoover Dam in 1936 created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. It holds Colorado River water serving California, Arizona, Nevada and the Republic of Mexico. Climate change and population growth in Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles have reduced the lake’s elevation more than 32 feet in the last five years. Here are year-on-year US Bureau of Reclamation closing elevations for September going back to 2004:
DATE ELEVATION
September 30, 2009…
High good, low bad: Mead in August
THE HOOVER DAM BYPASS bridge joining Nevada and Arizona neared completion over the Colorado River last month. Scheduled to open in 2010, it was recently dedicated as the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge in honor of the former Nevadan Governor and Arizona serviceman. Only the dead know what Mike O’Callaghan, who died in 2004, would make of the honor. The bridge enables yet more Las Vegas sprawl while the former governor and editor of the Las Vegas Sun was a fearless critic of the water policies of Southern Nevadan developers, including those backed by his protege, US Senator Harry Reid.…
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