A federal hydrologist appeared to be momentarily at a loss for words Thursday as he described how dire the latest forecast has gotten for how much water will flow through the Colorado River Basin this summer.
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“Really no good news this winter,” Cody Moser with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center said before taking a long pause on a webinar.
Moser went on to describe how just 800,000 acre-feet of water is projected to flow into Lake Powell, the upper basin’s largest reservoir, through July. That’s 13% of its average supply. It would also be the lowest summer inflow in the reservoir’s history. The projected flows into Powell have dramatically decreased over the last two months.
The worsening outlook is driven by record-low snowpack around the west and a March heat wave.
“We did see a cool down and a wetter April, but it pales in comparison to this five, six month stretch of just record warm and dry weather that we've seen,” he said.
Falling water levels at Lake Powell recently prompted the Interior Department to take emergency measures to prop it up. The goal is to stop it from getting so low that it can no longer produce hydroelectricity for several states in the west. Some forecasts have it reaching that level as soon as this summer.
The rescue plan involves taking a massive amount of water from the Flaming Gorge reservoir on the Wyoming-Utah border upstream and sending it down to Powell.
Meanwhile, there’s been some recent activity in the stalled negotiations involving how the water should be shared and conserved among the seven states depending on it.
The upper basin states have been at an impasse with the lower basin states over how much each basin should have to cut back its use.
Last week, Nevada, California and Arizona made a new short-term pitch for how to avert an ongoing crisis in water shortages.
The states said they would conserve as much as an additional one-million acre feet of water per year through 2028.
Colorado’s water negotiator gave the new pitch a tepid response Monday.
Becky Mitchell said in a statement that the proposal is a “good first step,” but it would be “unsustainable.”
“While the lower division states have made progress, more is needed to protect the Colorado River system now and into the future,” she said. “These differences highlight the urgent need to come back together with the help of a mediator.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
