Lake Powell, a vital reservoir, plunges toward unprecidented low levels as water crisis deepens in US west

Millions of Americans rely on Lake Powell and its downriver, Lake Mead, for fresh water. Photograph: RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Denver Post/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Millions of Americans rely on Lake Powell and its downriver, Lake Mead, for fresh water. Photograph: RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Denver Post/Getty Images Lake Powell, a vital reservoir, plunges toward unprecidented low levels as water crisis deepens in US west Experts say the critical reservoir system is careening toward a breaking point as the US west’s climate warms and dries Lake Powell, US’s second-largest reservoir, threatens to plunge to unprecedentedly low levels this year after a historically bleak snowpack failed to raise its water level, scientists and water experts have said, adding renewed urgency to stalled talks over how to conserve a water source depended on by tens of millions of people in the US south-west. The 185-mile Colorado River reservoir currently stands at about 23% of its capacity, or roughly 5.6m acre-feet. Lake Powell fell below that level for a few months three years ago. But those 2023 levels were recorded in the winter, when the reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border hits its lowest ebb. Spring runoff carried the level back up to 9.6m acre-feet by June, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation. Not this year. After a winter of historically low snowpack in the mountains and a heatwave that broke records across the south-west in March , water levels at Lake Powell barely rose this spring at all. Even after supplemental releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream, it ended the month of June below the annual low it hit the month before, and could keep dropping. Except for those few months in 2023 , Lake Powell’s water level hasn’t been this low since June of 1965 – two years after US authorities first started filling it. “What’s unique this year is that there was no recovery at all,” said Jack Schmidt, the director of Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. “What we expect to happen is that Lake Powell will go to unprecedented low conditions some time this fall.” “Water management in the Colorado River system is starting to get terribly complicated,” he added. With the spring runoff season passed, the lake’s water level is projected to keep dropping for the next eight months. The consequences could be wide-ranging – imperiling hydroelectric power and throwing more uncertainty into an already contentious negotiation over how to divvy up an increasingly unreliable water supply used by 40 million people across seven states, dozens of tribal nations and two countries. View image in fullscreen Scenes from the Flaming Gorge Dam, a hydroelectric plant that feeds water to Lake Powell. Photograph: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images Lake Powell stands at just 37ft above the level at which electricity-generating turbines start to fail, according to Inc . Nearly 6m household