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With the Colorado River’s largest reservoir just 38% full and declining toward the threshold of a first-ever shortage, Arizona water officials convened an online meeting this week to outline how the state will deal with water cutbacks, saying the reductions will be “painful” but plans are in place to lessen the blow for affected farmers next year.
Lake Mead’s decline is expected to trigger substantial reductions in water deliveries in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The largest of those cuts will affect Arizona, slashing its Colorado River supplies by 512,000 acre-feet, about a fifth of its total entitlement.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources and Central Arizona Project expect to hit a “Tier 1 shortage in their drought contingency plan in 2022. It would be the first time reservoirs ever dipped low enough to trigger substantial cuts to Arizona’s share of Colorado River water.
Decades of dry conditions have left Lake Mead 38% full and Lake Powell just 35% full. Levels are projected to drop even lower by the end of 2021.
Under the Drought Contingency Plan, central Arizona agricultural users would face the largest cuts. Their water supply could be reduced 65%.
“It’s a painful reduction, but fortunately, because of mitigation, it’s not going to be a full reduction right away going into 2022, CAP general manager Ted Cooke said in a Thursday briefing. Cooke said groundwater or redistribution of some cities water supplies could help partially offset agricultural cuts.
More Need Than Ever for Drought Resilience on the Colorado River James Brasuell Michael Lewyn Dan Kaplan James Brasuell
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More Need Than Ever for Drought Resilience on the Colorado River
The effects of climate change are already cutting deeply into the lifeblood of the U.S. West the Colorado River.
The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000, when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover Dam.
Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39% of capacity. And it’s approaching the threshold of a shortage for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s.
The latest projections from the federal government show the reservoir will soon fall 7 more feet to cross the trigger point for a shortage in 2022, forcing the largest mandatory water cutbacks yet in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.
July 2020 burned into the record books as the hottest month in Tucson history. At least, that was the case until August 2020 had the mercury rise even higher. Both months highlight a rise in temperatures and drought conditions that is particularly affecting the American Southwest. Though the hottest single day remains June 26, 1990, last summer s average temperature was solidified as Tucson s hottest ever and contributed to 2020 ranking as the driest year in more than a century of weather records.
On April 12,
Scientific American published an article putting it bluntly: We are living in a climate emergency, and we re going to say so. It s time to use a term that more than 13,000 scientists agree is needed. Last year saw California s largest wildfire season ever. And in February, Texas fought through a frigid winter storm that turned out to be the state s costliest natural disaster on record. And between the two, the Sonoran Desert is grappling with its own climate struggles.