If the Colorado River Basin experiences another dry winter, there will be an “outcome with devastating consequences,” a new study warns.
It is likely that storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead will be mostly depleted, with rural and urban communities being impacted.
“…in the event of another dry winter and with low projections of consumptive use, we would experience a gap of 2.59 million acre feet (MAF) between natural supply and Basin use. In such a situation, we risk a crash of the Basin’s water storage system,” the study warns. “We define a system crash as a situation in which the major reservoirs drop to elevations that risk damage to the dam infrastructure and are operated as ‘run-of-the-river’ facilities.”…