Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the state’s two largest lakes, have fallen to their lowest combined levels, a bad sign of the deepening water crisis in all seven states that depend on the Colorado River.
The two lakes are now lower than the previous record of 2023, researchers said.
“It’s a milestone,” said Jack Schmidt, director of Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. “It’s really a teaching moment for all of us about the severity of this problem.”
Lake Mead near Las Vegas, the nation’s largest reservoir, is 27 percent full.
Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border, the second largest, is only 23% of capacity. If it goes down 33 meters more, the water will not reach the intake hydroelectric power generation.
Schmidt and five other researchers write in a white paper that the new decline underscores the urgency of using less water. They predicted that the dams will continue to set daily records until the snow comes and brings the next season’s flow.
It is not clear whether strong El Niño conditions this year may provide some relief. The National Weather Service’s latest three-month forecast predicts above-average rainfall along the river and much of the Southwest through October.
The Colorado River provides water for about 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, from the Rocky Mountains to northern Mexico. Water was first divided among the states in 1922 under a treaty that overestimated what the river could provide.
The remains of the boat rest on a dry beach in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
(Ty ONeil / Associated Press)
For decades, so much water has been withdrawn that the river rarely meets the sea in Mexico, and its riverbed, once filled with swamps and forests, has withered into a dry riverbank.
In the last 27 years, the river has shrunk significantly. Research has shown that global warming intensifying very dry conditions.
As of 2020, the Colorado’s runoff is 32% lower than it was a century ago.
This year, the upper reaches of the Rocky Mountains had the least amount of snow on record.
“If you need more proof that we have a five-alarm fire, here it is,” Schmidt said.
Trump administration officials have gone he told the leaders of the state they drew up a 10-year plan to deal with the deficit. Close observers expect them to release it soon.
“The changes that will be required to survive in this world of reduced flux will be incredibly important,” Schmidt said. “We need to get the seven states to agree together, or accept a mandate from the federal government, that significant reductions must be made now.”
Seven regional negotiations are now underway ended the negotiations about how to reduce water use, with disagreements pitting the three downstream states – California, Arizona and Nevada – against the northern states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.
Representatives from California, Arizona and Nevada offered to make the biggest cuts, using about 1.6 million acres a year for the next two years.
But the state officials they have said The Trump administration relies on mandatory cuts of up to two per year in those three states — up to 40% of their combined appropriations. That’s roughly the equivalent of all the water that flowed from the faucets of 19 million people across Southern California last year, though it’s important to remember that most of the Colorado River’s water goes to agriculture: hay, lettuce, broccoli and other crops.
Federal officials appear to be “trying to put some framework in place that forces the states to try again, maybe with a slightly different playing field, to see if the states can come to some kind of agreement,” said Jennifer Pitt, director of the National Audubon Society’s Colorado River program.
Reaching an agreement would be the best outcome for all users along the Colorado River, Pitt said, because court battle you carry a lot of uncertainty.
Over the past five years, Southern California cities have gotten about a quarter of their water from the Colorado River.
They tried to lean on it, with some success. Those efforts, along with more water from Northern California, allowed the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California last week to accept $65 million from the US Bureau of Reclamation in return for leaving 200,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead.
That water, equivalent to the annual use of 600,000 average households, is expected to add about 3 feet to Lake Mead’s level, enough to temporarily halt the lowest levels for several months.
Lake Mead was low once before, in 2022, but Lake Powell was high then, so the two together hold more water.
In the last three years, California, Arizona and Nevada have turned to it voluntary dehydration and organization payments to farmers who agreed to leave the fields dry for part of the year.
The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dams along the river, now plans to provide an additional $100 million through water conservation programs in four upstream states, to pay farmers and ranchers who agree to use less. The water saved will remain in the dams, helping to slow their permanent decline.
