Trump administration takes emergency step to sustain key Colorado River reservoir

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

The water crisis along the Colorado River, a critical source for California and six other states, has gotten so serious that the Trump administration is responding with emergency measures to prevent disaster at the nation’s second largest reservoir.The effort to boost the water level of Lake Powell will bring consequences, cutting water to farms and cities across the Southwest.The actions will begin all the way up on the Wyoming-Utah border, where the federal government will release a significant amount of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado.

Hundreds of miles downstream, that will help raise the level of Lake Powell, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border and is three-quarters empty, the U.S.Bureau of Reclamation said Friday.Next, the Trump administration will keep more water in that lake, shrinking the amount flowing downriver into Lake Mead near Las Vegas, which holds water for Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.The measures are intended to prevent Lake Powell from falling so low that water would no longer reach intakes to turn turbines and generate electricity — a point it could have reached by August.“It’s avoiding catastrophe, and it’s basically a one-year solution,” said Mark Gold, a board member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.The federal government’s response was urgently needed, he said, “to basically stem the crisis for a year.”Southern California cities get, on average, 20-25% of their water from the Colorado River.

Farms in California’s Imperial Valley depend entirely on the river to grow crops including hay, broccoli and lettuce.The reduction in the water that’s released from Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell will make major water cuts necessary in California, Arizona and Nevada, Gold said, but exactly how those cutbacks are divided hasn’t been decided yet.Cli...