Lake Powell dropped to a record-low pool elevation of 3,519.91 feet on Saturday. The reading broke the previous low of 3,519.92 feet set in April 2023, even as federal water officials said the daily figure is provisional and can change.
Jack Schmidt said the combined contents of Lake Powell and Lake Mead were last this low in 1957. He called the situation unprecedented and said, “We are in completely new territory.”
Jack Schmidt on 1957
Schmidt, a senior research scientist and director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, said the last time the two reservoirs together held this little water was in 1957, before there even was a Lake Powell. He said the reservoirs were already filled by the time of that low point, which makes the current level more severe for the system now carrying water for the Southwest.
The lakes supply water to Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Mexico and federally recognized tribes, and they also help generate hydroelectric power and keep downstream flow steady. For readers tied to that system, the immediate practical effect is that the buffer built into Lake Powell and Lake Mead keeps shrinking while the river keeps being asked to do the same work.
Sharon Megdal on recovery
Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona, called the situation a natural disaster. She said, “It's appropriate to use the words critical, crisis because we haven't been there before since these two reservoirs had been filled.”
Megdal compared the system to a savings account and said one year of good weather will not refill it. She said it would take multiple years of good winters in terms of precipitation and snowmelt, adding that it would take multiple years, like 2023, to start filling the reservoir system.
The Bureau of Reclamation forecast
The Bureau of Reclamation’s most probable forecast for inflows into Lake Powell is 75 percent of average. Schmidt said the region is losing snowpack through sublimation, evaporation and climate change-related warming and drying, and he warned that even an exceptional year such as 2023 would not end the crisis.
El Nino may bring rain to the West, but Megdal and Schmidt said it will not be enough to replenish the lakes’ supplies. For now, the number that matters is the one on the reservoir gauge, and federal water officials may revise it again as more daily measurements come in.
