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FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) \u2014 <\/span>To maintain power generation for thousands of homes across much of the western United States, a canyon in eastern Utah will gush so much water this spring that it will keep as many as 50,000 toilets flushing at any one time.<\/p>\n While the Green and Colorado rivers may seem like rich moisture amidst a parched desert of sandstone arches and thorny cacti, the opposite is actually true.<\/p>\n After the driest winter on record, officials want to raise water levels in the severely depleted Colorado River’s Lake Powell this spring to keep hydroelectric power generation running. To do so, it will eventually release up to one-third of the water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the upper Green River in Wyoming and Utah, which would exceed the record water level in 2022 that kept electricity flowing.<\/p>\n Lake Powell, dammed by Glen Canyon Dam, provides cheap, carbon-free electricity to more than 350,000 homes. But costs are rising in other parts of the disputed river basin, on which ranchers, industry and about 40 million residential water customers rely heavily.<\/p>\n In Flaming Canyon in southwestern Wyoming, Tony and his wife Tony Valdez, owners of Buckboard Marina, note that water levels are expected to drop by 10 feet (3 meters) by the end of summer due to the release of water. That would mean an even longer drive to the water to launch the boat.<\/p>\n “Of course we’re concerned,” Jen Valdez said. “And we’re probably going to get to a point where we need to be even more concerned.”<\/p>\n If all goes as planned and the weather doesn’t improve, Flaming Gorge could drop as much as 27 feet (8 meters) in a year’s time, leaving Backboard Marina even higher and drier.<\/p>\n It’s probably just a temporary solution during a long-term drought, but it will also have an impact downstream, as water managers at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plan to keep more water from flowing out of Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah line than usual.<\/p>\n Downstream, Lake Mead near Las Vegas is trending similar to the previous low-pressure system four years ago that exposed submerged boats and human remains.<\/p>\n Federal officials say drastic measures are needed to keep the Powell water line high enough to operate power-generating turbines without allowing air to enter the system and cause damage.<\/p>\n Approximately 155 customers, ranging from cities and tribes to local electric cooperatives and utility districts, receive hydroelectric power from Glen Canyon Dam and other federal generators. No country is 100% dependent on hydropower.<\/p>\n Many of them live in underprivileged areas, and all are nonprofit organizations that pay for, among other things, the costs of operating and maintaining the dams and the federal investment in the dams.<\/p>\n The Federal Western Regional Power Authority has a contractual obligation to provide a certain amount of electricity to its customers. Leslie James, executive director of the nonprofit Colorado River Energy Distribution Association, said the loss of hydropower would mean WAPA would have to look for power elsewhere, which is more expensive and likely non-renewable.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Glen Canyon hydropower is reduced to zero or a lower amount, it will have a disparate impact on community bills,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n James said he has never seen anything like this in his 48 years helping power customers in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.<\/p>\n Replacing federal hydropower with market purchases has forced Heberlite to increase rates for the past five years. & Power southeast of Salt Lake City, the recent increase has been 13%, said Emily Brandt, the company’s energy resources manager.<\/p>\n Due to increasingly frequent droughts, evaporation, and water demands, especially for irrigation of alfalfa for livestock production, Lake Powell’s water level has shrunk to 3,526 feet (1,075 meters) above sea level, which is only 23% of its full water capacity.<\/p>\n To continue generating electricity, the reservoir must not fall below 3,490 feet (1,200 meters), the height of Glen Canyon Dam’s generator intake.<\/p>\n This hasn’t happened since the 700-foot-tall dam was completed in 1963 and Lake Powell gradually filled up in 1980.<\/p>\n In 2022, the Bureau of Reclamation released an unprecedented 500,000 acre-feet (617 million cubic meters) of water from the Flaming Valley to raise Lake Powell. Flaming Gorge’s latest releases to maintain Lake Powell’s power output could ultimately be twice that total.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the plan to curtail 1.5 million acre-feet (1.85 billion cubic meters) of Lake Powell would reduce Hoover Dam’s power generation by 40% at lower Lake Mead downstream.<\/p>\n Another drawback is that warm water from Lake Powell’s surface could encourage the spread of smallmouth bass, an invasive fish that competes with endangered humpback whales in the Colorado River downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. Groups like the Grand Canyon Trust are urging watershed managers to mix in deeper, cooler water to keep the Grand Canyon inhospitable to smallmouth bass.<\/p>\n Decades of worsening drought trends<\/p>\n The strongest releases from the Flaming Valley in the coming days and weeks will be tailored to help native fish in the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River.<\/p>\n Eventually, Flaming Gorge will drop from 83% full to an estimated 59% full. The 2022 release from Flaming Gorge was followed by a wet winter, temporarily alleviating water concerns across the region.<\/p>\n “We were kind of rescued by Mother Nature,” said Valdez, owner of Buckboard Marina.<\/p>\n One or two years of rainfall will not be enough to reverse a quarter-century-long “megadrought” caused at least in part by human-induced climate change. But Valdez is optimistic that the wet weather will return.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully we can branch out into other things,\u201d Valdez said. “I’ll be back someday.”<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Pineda reported from Los Angeles.<\/em><\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press receives support for coverage of water and environmental policy from the Walton Family Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environment coverage, visit https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/climate-and-environment.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Water #rushes #droughtdepleted #Lake #Powell #cost<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) \u2014 To maintain power generation for thousands of homes across much of the western United States, a canyon in eastern Utah will gush so much water this spring that it will keep as many as 50,000 toilets flushing at any one time. While the Green and Colorado rivers may seem like … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1495,2412,1543,1604,2411,617],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cost","tag-droughtdepleted","tag-lake","tag-powell","tag-rushes","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Learn more |Water in Utah:<\/h2>\n
A balancing act to maintain power production<\/h2>\n
Hydropower is a renewable resource as long as there is water.<\/h2>\n
Maintaining Lake Powell could have environmental costs<\/h2>\n