moon
Satire for Sanity
‘The brink of disaster’: 2023 is a critical year for the Colorado River as reservoirs sink toward ‘dead pool’
Deep uncertainty looms over the Colorado River and the 40 million people who depend on it for their water supply as the basin enters a critical year that could determine its future stability.
Plagued by decades of overuse and human-caused climate change, demand for the river’s water has vastly outpaced its supply. In 2023, federal and state officials must find a way to keep as much as 4 million acre-feet of water in Lakes Mead and Powell – 30% of what the Colorado River states have historically used.
Failing to do so means either of these lakes, the largest manmade reservoirs in the country, could reach “dead pool” in the next two years, where the water level is too low to flow through the dams and downstream to the communities and farmers that need it.
The cuts that are needed are on an unprecedented scale, and officials will be fighting an uphill battle against a deep, multi-year drought to get them done. State officials tried drastic measures to cut their usage this year, but the river’s continued decline was an alarming reality check.
Western state officials wrote a letter in May agreeing to leave 1 million acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Then, they watched as the same amount of water disappeared due to system losses and evaporation.
“Everything we tried to do through the May 3 letter was wiped out by mother nature,” top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN. “We have to understand that could happen to us again. It’s been happening to us almost every year for the past few years.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/30/us/colorado-river-lake-mead-drought-2023-climate/index.html
This could have gone into the ' Global Fry-Up ' thread- but it's too important to be ignored out of familiarity.
The Mexican factor is going to be a very, very difficult one.
N.B. Some might have noticed that I've drastically reduced my thread-ban list. All you have to do to get back on it is to call me a liar or an antisemite.