A cream-colored band lines the orange sandstone walls that rise above the blue-green waters of Lake Powell. The so-called “bathtub rings,” these chalky layers remind boaters zooming across the popular reservoir how far the lake has fallen.
After two decades of drought and an exceptionally warm winter, those rings will likely soon span even wider as Powell continues to drop towards a record low.
“Right now the hydrology that we have in front of us puts us in a very, very precarious situation,” said Gene Shawcroft, Utah’s Colorado River negotiator…