The Bureau of Reclamation will pull two emergency levers to keep Lake Powell from falling below the level needed to generate hydropower at Gl. en Canyon Dam. The agency plans to release up to 1 million acre-feet (MAF) from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border over the next year, and simultaneously cut releases from Powell to Lake Mead to 6 MAF—the minimum amount legally allowed—through September.
The decision, announced after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s second meeting with the seven basin governors in three months, underscores how fast the river’s hydrology has collapsed. Colorado River system storage currently sits at 36 percent of capacity. Lake Powell’s projected minimum probable inflow for this water year is 2.8 MAF, or 29 percent of the historical average, and one of the lowest readings on record. In the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center’s latest projection, cited by Jonathan Thompson in The Land Desk, spring runoff to Lake Powell will come in at around half of last year’s already-bad figure.
The Bureau of Reclamation acknowledges that reducing Powell releases will accelerate Mead’s decline, with Hoover Dam potentially losing up to 40 percent of its hydropower generating capacity by this fall. Arizona’s Department of Water Resources warned that the 6 MAF release from Powell could violate the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which requires a 10-year rolling delivery of 75 MAFt to the Lower Basin. The state issued a warning shot, calling the plan “a serious development that Arizona will assess and will respond to accordingly in time.” Thompson calculates that a 6 MAF release this year will drag the ten-year aggregate at Lees Ferry down to roughly 79 MAF, closing fast on the floor that could expose the Upper Basin to a compact call from downstream.
“There are no good options,” Kyle Roerink of the Great Basin Water Network told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “But it is clear the Bureau of Reclamation is choosing Lake Powell over Lake Mead at this point. It is a gambit that the federal government may soon regret.”
The emergency actions are expected to buy Lake Powell roughly 54 feet of elevation through the next year. After that, the river may enter the summer of 2027 with no consensus deal, no permanent Bureau of Reclamation director (President Donald Trump’s pick withdrew last fall after Upper Basin pushback) and what Thompson, borrowing from Arizona water officials, calls “abysmal math.”
Burgum’s budget mess
Burgum’s Colorado River announcement landed on the same day that CWP’s Lauren Bogard, Lilly Bock-Brownstein, and Aaron Weiss laid out the case for why House appropriators should press the secretary hard at today’s budget hearing, his first congressional appearance in nearly a year. Burgum’s FY2027 Interior budget request cuts the agency by almost 13 percent on top of the roughly 20 percent of the workforce Interior has already shed in 15 months, including about 4,000 permanent positions at the National Park Service.
Among the cuts at Reclamation: WaterSMART grants ($15 million) and Drought Response and Comprehensive Drought Plans ($5 million). “Of all the places to make cuts in your budget,” CWP wrote, “why are you asking Congress to eliminate programs that address drought and water conservation in the middle of the worst drought in 1,200 years?” The hearing before the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled for 1:30 pm Mountain Time today.
Quick hits
Podcast: The dangerous rush to consolidate America’s wildfire response
The Landscape | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
Record drought sparks wildfire fears, burn rate already 231% above average
CBS News | Inside Climate News
Forest Service to press ahead with sweeping reorg, with or without Congress
Federal News Network | GovExec | Outside | More Than Just Parks [Opinion]
BLM schedules its largest ever Colorado lease sale for June: 155,000 acres
‘Energy dominance’ fails again as Utah oilfield lays off 157
Interior’s #3, Karen Budd-Falen, wades back into Point Reyes grazing dispute
Short on funding, National Parks Traveler plans to shut down this summer
SFGate | National Parks Traveler
Energy Secretary says gas prices might not drop back below $3 until 2027
Quote of the day
If we become the fire force, equivalent of Trump’s space force, that’s all we do. Everything, for every wildfire, looks like a nail, and we’re the hammer.”
—Timothy Ingalsbee, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE), The Landscape podcast
Picture This
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