Drought Contingency Plan

A new plan will release water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, a measure designed to boost dropping levels in Lake Powell. The releases come as a response to record lows, which are on course to drop too low to generate hydropower at the Glen Canyon dam. The Drought Response Operations Plan brings together the four states of the upper Colorado River basin – Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico – and the federal government.

Lake Powell is is strained by more than two decades of drought, and its water levels are dipping dangerously low. The reservoir passed an important threshold. Water levels went below 3,525 feet – the last major milestone before a threat to hydropower generation at the Glen Canyon Dam. What's next for the nation's second-largest reservoir?

Nancy Caywood’s Pinal County farm should have a full field of alfalfa, but since the irrigation district shut off her water because of drought, her fields are empty and dry.

The massive reservoir on the Colorado River hit a new historic low on July 24, dropping below 3,555.1 feet in elevation. The previous low was set in 2005. The last time the reservoir was this low was in 1969, when it first filled.

A showdown is looming on the Colorado River. The river’s existing management guidelines are set to expire in 2026. The states that draw water from it are about to undertake a new round of negotiations over the river’s future, while it’s facing worsening dry conditions due in part to rising temperatures.

California is spending more than $200 million to keep an unfolding ecological crisis from getting worse. The state wants to stabilize habitat along the southern bank of the Salton Sea, the state’s largest lake.

Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the American Southwest.

Increasingly bleak forecasts for the Colorado River have for the first time put into action elements of the 2019 upper basin drought contingency plan.

The drive behind a massive water development project in southwestern Utah, the Lake Powell Pipeline, shows no signs of slowing even after the Colorado...

A plan to address a shrinking supply of water on a river that serves 40 million people in the U.S. West is headed to President Donald Trump.The U.S. House…