Lake Mead could be dry by 2021
EERE News is reporting on a study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that puts the odd at 50% that Lake Mead will drop too low for power production by the year 2017 and run completely dry by 2021.
If that were to happen, it would leave about 1.3 million people without power and approximately 8 million people without water.
From Save and Conserve:
The Lake Mead/Lake Powell/Colorado River system is currently at about 50% capacity. Based on current water use & projected future demand, the system is on an unsustainable death spiral. Things are so bad that there is a 10% chance Lake Mead could be dry by 2014. That should be alarming for residents of the southwest, to say the least.
These numbers are based on forecasted climate conditions and water demand. If either of those variable shift, it could buy them a few more years. Still, the future looks pretty bleak for that area.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
The west is in a worse position than Georgia is in the long term, but I am skeptical of this story. They don’t source anything. Are their assumptions based on climate change creating less water flow, or just growing usage patterns with normal inflow?
March 13th, 2008 at 2:25 am
I live in Phoenix and have been hearing this story for years. The levels of Lake Mead have dropped and there is always a concern for water, but i believe they publish these stories to scare. We have been drought free for the last couple of years(Drought Moniter) and desert is as green i’ve ever seen it. I know it will take multiple wet winters to make a dent in refilling Mead.
P.S I began monitoring this site from Arizona when i heard that Atlanta was in a drought when they got ONLY 35 INCHES OF RAIN last year when they avg 50 INCHES. Was AMAZED, did not realize how much rain you guys get . Checked Seattle and they avg 35 inches per year CRAZY!! By the way Phoenix avg a whopping 8 inches of rain and no drought
March 13th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Journalism is dead.
Long live Infotainment.
March 13th, 2008 at 6:17 am
It’s true that of the top 20 metro areas in the country, Atlanta and Houston get the most rain (50″+ annually). But what makes Lake Lanier unique is that Lanier’s watershed is very small for a lake its size. Lanier’s watershed gets over 70″ of rain a year. IIRC, it’s the wettest area east of the Mississippi. What makes for this freak 20″ difference in rainfall between extreme northeast Georgia and metro Atlanta is beyond me.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Hi Folks,
While I don’t claim to be an expert about the Atlanta situation, I know a little bit about Western water issues. Any prediction has a possibility of being wrong, but consider a couple of things.
The Colorado River system, that waters about 1/3 of the West, is already overallocated between upper and lower basins.
Phoenix, a city that sits in the middle of a hot, dry desert, is growing at 110K people/year. I don’t know the growth rate for Las Vegas, but right off the top of my head it has to be close to Phoenix’s. Nothing is slowing down in the L.A. area, which takes a big chunk of the Colorado.
The question is not whether, nor necessarily if it is climate-based, in the American SW. It is when.
It’s easy to Google up a ton of info on this– Colorado River Compact, Phoenix water supply, Las Vegas water supply. Books have been written on this, and it’s impossible to summarize in a short post.
Here’s the bottom line– who’s going to hit bottom first– Atlanta, a sprawl city in a wet part of the world that overgrew its supply? Or the more obvious desert megalopolises that never had the supply to begin with, but got it through borrowing and stealing as they went along?
While the 2014 date may be infotainment, the crisis is real and almost here for the desert Southwest.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Whatthechuck,
Atlanta uses 3% of the water that comes out of Lanier daily.
The majority of the water released from Lanier is for downstream needs like power plants, big industry, and fish and wildlife…
Atlanta didn’t “outgrow” its supply. We make such a small dent in water usage, it’s ridiculous.
No doubt about our sprawl… that’s a problem in many ways. But that is not what caused this shortage. A lack of rain, broken dam gauges, outdated water management practices by the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s what caused the crisis we’re in now. If the Corps had instituted a plan of releasing just enough water to meet downstream requirements back when this drought started over a year ago, Lanier would be just barely lower than its average level for this time of year.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Craig, where are you getting that 3% number from?
May 29th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Hmm .. here is an idea for Nevada. Desalination plant. Wow .. what an original thought. Oh wait, it’s too expensive, there are legal challenges with boardering states, it’s very complicated to build and implement, blah blah blah blah blah.
The USA used to be the baddest country on the planet.
- Want to go to the moon? Ok … 8 years and we are there.
- Europe overrun by Germany? Ok .. we’ll retool our major factories in a few months, go from creating technically inferior equipment to building the best of the best in a few years, personal sacrifice of the citizens to support the war effort, etc.
- Germany working on atomic bomb that could end the war in their favor? We all know how that turned out.
But now .. now we are governed by morons, by talkers and not doers.
So here is an idea. Politicians shut up, hire engineering firms and construction firms to create and bid on plans to build desalination plant on the coast of CA and run it to Lake Meade, do what it takes and get it done.
Cost is prohibitive? Compared to what. To hoping that snow melt run off returns to former volume even though the snow is not there to run off? Hope it rains a lot in the desert the next 100 years? I’ve been to Vegas many times. The economy in that city is staggering. The cost of doing nothing and jeopardizing the Nevada economy will cost Nevada and the US many times more than the cost of building the infrastructure to support the region.
How about a wind powered desalination plant with either nuclear or power grid electrical backup. How about the states out west (and the rest of the country) realize its time to stop infighting and work together to keep the USA as a major power in the world.
If any of these moron politicians thinks that our great military and economy will be sustained without solid infrastructure (here in the US .. not in Iraq) then they are leading us to the path of decline.
Or Nevada can do what Atlanta does; dont plan ahead, dont prepare for the future, and pray for rain.