Last week, a Daily Post reader sent a link to an article in the TheHill.com, a website focused mainly on the hubbub in Washington DC. This particular article, however, concerned events taking place west of the Continental Divide. Written by reporter Zack Budryk and with the headline, “Lake Mead’s decline points to scary water future in West”, it included a quote from Kathryn Sorensen, a member of the board of advisors at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University:
This means the only viable long-term solution is that we must collectively use significantly less water from the Colorado River. Cities cannot solve this problem alone because something like 75-80 percent of Colorado River water is used for agriculture. Everyone must contribute,” she told The Hill. “That’s easier said than done because of course everyone thinks their own water use is justified and that no one else’s is.
Mr. Budryk’s story echoes numerous articles in dozens of newspapers and news websites over the past few years. To read similar stories, all you need do is Google the term “Lake Mead.” You might even find a few such articles here in the Daily Post, written by Yours Truly.
The basic story elements are:
Ongoing drought conditions in the American Southwest, and the assumption that global warming is destined to make the problems worse.
The level in Lake Mead — the nation’s largest man-made water reservoir — dropping steadily since about 2001, reaching reaching an all-time low of 1,071.56 feet above sea level earlier this month, leaving it just 37 percent full.
Worries about rising electricity costs throughout the Southwest, if (and when) the massive generators in the Hoover Dam (and in the Glen Canyon Dam, at Lake Powell) run dry.
Pending conflicts among the seven US states that make use of the (over-allocated) Colorado River.
Disappearing groundwater in the Southwest.
Agricultural users pitted against urban and suburban water districts.
With the regional situation grows more challenging by the day — in certain places — the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) reported that all five of our main municipal reservoirs — Lake Hatcher, Stevens Reservoir, Lake Pagosa, Village Lake and Lake Forest — are full to the brim. Nevertheless, PAWSD has announced its operations are now in “Voluntary Drought Stage”.
The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD), in compliance with its 2020 Drought Management Plan, is currently in a VOLUNTARY Drought Stage. The primary driver of this drought stage is the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) indicates our area is in a Severe to Extreme Drought… Under the Voluntary Drought Stage there are no mandatory water use restrictions, however PAWSD does encourage responsible water use. This spring we have seen higher than normal temperatures. These high temperatures along with a reduction in late spring precipitation resulted in a quicker than normal melting of the snowpack reducing our available water and could lead to water use restrictions.
In other words, things look good, at the moment, here in Pagosa Springs. But trouble might be brewing.
At the regular meeting of the San Juan Water Conservancy District this week, the board ended the meeting with a discussion about Navajo Reservoir. Was it true, that water managers would be ordering… or requesting, or begging for… releases from three Colorado River Basin reservoirs — Navajo Reservoir, Blue Mesa Reservoir, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir — in an attempt to keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead producing electricity?
Disclosure: Although I currently serve as a volunteer on the San Juan Water Conservancy District board, the following editorial expresses only my personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of anyone else on the SJWCD board, nor of the board as a whole.
Navajo Reservoir, (aka Navajo Lake) is one of our community’s most popular recreational destinations, and a key artificial water storage asset for neighboring Indian tribes. It began filling in 1962, and is the fifth largest reservoir in the Colorado River Basin system. When full, it holds about 1.7 million acre feet of water. It’s about 67% full at the moment. Blue Mesa Reservoir was about 42% full at the end of May. Flaming Gorge, in Utah, sits at about 84% full.
No one at the SJWCD board meeting had firm information about this rumor, but a drought plan drafted in 2019 calls for water releases from Navajo, Flaming Gorge and Blue Mesa into Lake Powell, if Powell’s surface elevation falls below a critical threshold of 3,525 feet — the level when the hydroelectric generators stop functioning.
But Lake Powell must release water on a regular basis, both the generate the electricity that we depend upon and to send water to Lake Mead, downstream. So water flowing out of Navajo Reservoir is eventually destined for Lake Mead, and from there, to (mostly) southern California farmers.
If it’s true that Lake Mead sits at 37% full — and I have no reason to doubt the reports, except that they come from government sources — then, according to my pocket calculator, the reservoir is about 16 million acre-feet short of capacity.
If water managers completely emptied Navajo Reservoir, currently holding 1.1 million acre-feet of stored fresh water, downstream into Lake Powell and thence into Lake Mead, it would put hardly a dent in Lake Mead’s problems.
But it would definitely cause Archuleta County’s recreational boaters some concern.
Obviously, as Kathryn Sorensen suggests, “we must collectively use significantly less water from the Colorado River.”
And as she says, “Easier said than done…”
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.