Lake Mead Drops to Record Low Level | LiveScience Etc.
The thick white band ringing Lake Mead’s shoreline shows the drop in water levels. The near-vertical walls of Boulder Canyon are just upstream of Hoover Dam. Credit: National Park Service, Lake Mead National Recreation Area
The thick white band ringing Lake Mead’s shoreline shows the drop in water levels. The near-vertical walls of Boulder Canyon are just upstream of Hoover Dam. Credit: National Park Service, Lake Mead National Recreation Area
PHOENIX — It almost rained here this morning. Looked like rain. Smelled like rain. A few sprinkles hit my windshield in the short drive to my son's school, but then it petered out and now it's sunny. That's typical. It's a desert. And that's why millions of us down here rely on Lake Mead and other reservoirs to our north for water. But it seems increasingly likely that before long, the tap is going to run dry, or nearly so, and we'll all be rationing. Serves us (and by us, I mean governments, home builders, home buyers, farmers, and everyone else who relies on snow in Utah and Colorado to provide water hundreds of miles away) right.
Over the weekend, Lake Mead hit its lowest level since it was filled 75 years ago. Figuring out why is not rocket science, nor should it be any surprise. Studies find the West is drying up. That's not "will," but "is."
In general, the Southwest can expect drought condition to prevail for the next century or so, scientists say. And in fact, the construction boom down here, and all the agricultural use of Colorado River water from here to California, was predicated on water flows nearly a century ago, amid an unusually wet period that we can no longer count on. I noted back in 2006 that agreements to allocate water from the Colorado River were made in 1922, during an historically wet period, and there just is not as much water as has been promised.
In 2008, we reported that Lake Mead could be dry by 2021. And last year we reported there is a one-in-two chance that the water reservoirs of the Colorado River will dry up by 2050 if water management practices remain unchanged.
The term "drought" has lost its meaning. The truth is, we consume more water than what Nature provides. There are just as many buckets of water on Earth as ever, but those buckets tend not to be where the people are, or the buckets are full of yucky water. [How much water is there on Earth?]
Many communities will likely turn to drinking recycled sewage. Our town already waters all its common areas with sewer water, which we're warned to stay away from, but I suppose if astronauts can drink their pee, so can we. Desalination, a potential savior, is still too expensive to be practical on large scales, but it holds promise for many locales.
Meanwhile, Lake Mead is "still eight feet above the level at which a shortage is officially declared and limited rationing could go into effect for users in Nevada and Arizona," NY Times reports. Drink up!
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