High good, low bad: Mead in October 2011
While we set out to scare each other last night, Lake Mead was all about reassurance. The largest storage reservoir on the Colorado River continued to rise as a result of last winter’s generous snowpack. Allowing for some tweaking by federal river keepers, Mead closed at midnight on Halloween 2011 at 1,120.00 feet.
This is almost 37 feet higher than the previous October closing.
Hooray? …
High good, low bad: Mead in July 2011
Why, you might wonder, would anyone in their right mind use a map highlighting the Mississippi River system for a monthly post about the elevation of the largest reservoir on the Colorado River? The reason is a renewed offer on the table from Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy. Divert the Mississippi and its tributaries to feed upper basin Colorado River users, give Vegas the water therefore left in the Colorado River system and she’ll leave the Great Basin aquifer alone. “The instate project wouldn’t be needed because at that point what you’ve done is securitize the Colorado River,” she tells a reporter for “Vegas, Inc.”
This transcontinental flood control scheme isn’t new. Pat’s been braving ribald mockery over it for at least three years now. The “give me more Colorado River water or the Great Basin desert gets it” line isn’t new either — that’s been a …
High good, low bad: Mead in June 2011
Source: Water Resource Planning in Washington County, Utah and the Lake Powell Pipeline, Presented at the Nevada Water Resource Association meeting February 3, 2011 by Corey Cram of the Washington County Water Conservancy District
Not only is this normally first-of-the-month post about Lake Mead late, it’s not even about Lake Mead. I find that the other great storage reservoir on the Colorado River, Lake Powell, was the more interesting of the big drinks in June. The Salt Lake Tribune found Utah’s Department of Water Resources taking state legislators for a plane ride over Utahn water ways. Whee.
Unlike leaner years, there was plenty of gleaming snowpack to sell any number of projects, not least the patently crazy proposal for a $1.1bn pipeline from Lake Powell into the snowbird communities of Washington County. That stretch of old Mormondom is to the south of the state, along the border of Nevada’s dry …
High good, low bad: Mead in May 2011
Lake Mead’s rise by two feet in May presages a total rise of 32 feet by the end of February, 2012, reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal several weeks ago. Last night at midnight, the elevation of the largest storage reservoir in the US was 1,097.89, leaving another 30 feet due for release from Lake Powell upstream. The federal Bureau of Reclamation graphic, left, shows how much water sits in reserve as snowpack in the upper Colorado region.
As the snow melts and the water makes its way through the dam system upstream, the 2010-11 water year on the Colorado will push Lake Mead steadily upward from the 1,075 elevation, at which point shortages would have been declared for Arizona and Nevada. For California to be hit by shortages, the reservoir would have to drop further because of an antique priority rights system governing the river.
While Las Vegas celebrated …
High good, low bad: Mead in January 2011
The Economist is the latest migratory Eastern (English this time) high flier to take a pass over Lake Mead and notice the “bathtub ring,” then to quote Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy, who said that Southern Nevada is the “canary in the mine shaft” of western water scarcity. That would be true if canaries were the ones running the mines. Anyway, as far as January on the Colorado River went, a far more interesting story appeared last month in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which reported that work on the “starter tunnel” for the “third straw” for Las Vegas to draw water from an ever-shallower Lake Mead will need to begin afresh because of persistent flooding problems. Click here to read Henry Brean’s report.
Meanwhile, for those who follow such things, Lake Mead closed at 1,091.73 feet, or thereabouts. By way of characterization, suffice it to say that the elevation …
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