Lake Powell is now at the lowest level it has ever been, breaking a record that was set in 2023.
Currently, the reservoir is at 3,519.91 feet above sea level. The record was previously set in April 2023, when Powell was at 3,519.92 feet.
Only a little over a week ago, Lake Mead also hit a milestone, dropping to its lowest elevation on record. It was sitting at 1,040.50 feet above sea level on Aug. 6 — which is the least amount of water in the reservoir since it was filled in the 1930s.
While Lake Mead usually starts to refill at this point in the season, Lake Powell won’t do so until spring.
Download the Straight Arrow app today to get the stories that matter free from manipulation, bias or agenda.™
Point phone camera here
“Every record that’s broken is a teaching moment,” Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, previously said in an interview with Straight Arrow. “When Babe Ruth’s home run record was broken, it was a monumental record, but it was only one home run. But what it is is a teaching moment to then reflect on what the context of that original record is that gets broken.”
Both Lake Mead and Powell are reservoirs for the Colorado River, which has been suffering from drought for decades, as well as a historically low snowpack and warm spring season this year. Around 40 million people rely on the Colorado River. It fuels resources across seven U.S. states, 30 tribes and two Mexican states.
Those seven states are broken into two groups: the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin.
The Upper Basin includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The Lower Basin includes Arizona, California and Nevada.
With the lowering water levels, Mead and Powell are in danger of hitting dead pool, which is when water can’t flow out of the reservoirs and generate hydroelectric power.
Powell will lose its capacity to generate hydropower at 3,490 feet. Mead and Powell differ in that the latter doesn’t have the same gradual drop-off. Instead, Powell loses all meaningful hydropower production at 3,500 feet.
The annual flow of water coming out of the Colorado River has decreased by 20% compared to last century. Within the last decade, flows dropped to a third lower than they were in the 1990s.
In July, Lakes Mead and Powell hit the lowest combined storage level for the first time since 1957.
The issue in the Colorado River, Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Center, told Straight Arrow, “is unique globally and it represents a human-caused climate change shift in how we operate.”
“The reality here is we have less water,” Udall said to Straight Arrow. “We can’t kick the can down the road anymore. These reservoirs are levels such that that’s just not possible. We’ve spent down this bank account as shown by the reservoir levels over the last 27 years, and we’re close to being broke here.”
Under a potential plan proposed last month to manage the Colorado River, Arizona, California and Nevada could see significant water use restrictions.The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will require the three states to cut water usage by a combined 20% by 2028.
Operational thresholds provide for annual releases from Lake Powell between 5 million acre-feet and 12 million acre-feet; Lower Basin reductions of up to 3 million acre-feet; 8 million acre-feet and 3 million acre-feet of conserved water to be stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead for future use; and voluntary reductions in the Upper Basin conservation of up to 200,000 acre-feet.
These reductions “would devastate Arizona’s water users and its economy,” the state’s Department of Resources said.
“We will continue to work with the federal government, as well as with our tribal, agricultural and municipal partners in Arizona, and the other Colorado River Basin states, to make river operations work for the betterment of all,” the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in a statement at the time.
Round out your reading
- All your questions about napping, answered.
- Trump’s $5,000 promise echoes past payouts that never materialized.
- Inside the effort to make data centers pay their share of electricity costs.
- Why did the Feds seize the ’largest Martian meteorite on Earth’?
- Photos and video show exactly where and when Trump visited Ground Zero after 9/11.
