The Levels Of Lake Powell And Lake Mead

The process formed a lake second only to the Great Lakes in terms of volume of water and length of shoreline.

The State of Colorado has suffered from a water shortage in recent years; a difficult situation which is easily visible when viewing the quickly shortening length of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, for example, is roughly 130 feet lower than it once was, marked by the stained rock which towers above the current water level. “The river has become a perfect symbol of what happens when we ask too much of a limited resource: it disappears. In fact, the Colorado no longer regularly reaches the sea” (Zielinski, 2010). Legislation was implemented early on to address this issue, though the results were (perhaps not surprisingly) rather unanticipated, regarding

7. Why did you need to calculate the % of water loss each day instead of graphing the total amount of water lost each day?

He found that the Colorado River was the best source. In 1925, the Department of Water and Power (DWP) was established. Now what came to be called the Colorado River Aqueduct, needed financing to be accomplished. Voters from the region approved a $2 million bond to perform the engineering needed for the aqueduct. In 1928, an act of the State Legislature, created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), and its purpose was to construct the Colorado River aqueduct to supply water to Southern California. By 1931, voters issued another bond for $220 million that would start the construction of the aqueduct. By 1941 the aqueduct was completed stretching 242 miles from the Colorado River to its final holding reservoir near Riverside, California. The Colorado River Aqueduct consists of more than 90 miles of tunnels, 55 miles of conduit, 30 miles of siphons, five pumping stations, 5 treatment plants, and 9 reservoirs. All of this can supply about 1.2 million-acre-feet of water every year, which is more than a billion gallons a day. This caused phenomenal growth of Los Angeles, San Diego and neighboring areas. The aqueduct is capable of lifting more than 1600 cfs to a static height of 1600 feet as it takes a path through mountains and deserts. Upon the completion of the Colorado River Aqueduct in 1941, the Municipal Water District began to wholesale Colorado River water to its member agencies. Today those agencies include 14 cities, 12 municipal water districts, and a county water authority. More than 130 municipalities and many unincorporated areas are served by this project of the DWP’s and Mulholland’s vision. Before Mulholland died on July 22, 1935, he lived to see the inaugurations of the Colorado River Aqueduct and Hoover Dam, constructed in the spirit of significance he had always

The snow on the Rocky Mountains is been melting in the river upper basin, causing snow runoffs to originate.

The Colorado River Basin starts in the Rocky Mountains and cuts through 1500 miles of canyon lands and deserts of seven US states and two Mexican states to supply a collection of dams and reservoirs with water to help irrigate cropland, support 40 million people, and provide hydroelectric power for the inland western United States [1,2]. From early settlement, rights over the river have been debated and reassigned to different states in the upper and lower basin; however, all the distribution patterns lead to excessive consumption of the resource. In 1922, the seven US states signed into the Colorado River Compact, which outlined the policy for the distribution rights to the water [3], however, this compact was written during an exceptionally

Beside these arguments, there is also a more quantitative side to the debate. The ecological detriments of the Glen Canyon Dam have been well-documented. Extensive changes were brought about in the Colorado River ecosystem by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. Most of these alterations negatively affected the functioning of the system and the native aquatic species of the river. The reduced supply and transport of

But Bretz presented evidence that there was at least one exception to this rule-namely the geologic formations of the Columbia River Basin and the Channeled Scablands. He proposed that a glacier caused an ice dam that blocked the Clark Fork River, creating Glacial Lake Missoula. He thought that the ice dam would

Arizona has an incredibly large dependence on the Colorado River and groundwater. In fact, 39% of all water usage in Arizona is comprised of Colorado River water. Any dependence of that scale on any resource that originates in another area is always a major risk, as any major disaster or drastic change to the source of the river can cripple the state’s water supply. Furthermore, while Arizona does house the majority of the Lower Basin of the Colorado, the Colorado’s Upper Basin is shared between 4 other states, all with their own water needs and all with a susceptibility to drought. On the other hand, another 40% of all water Arizona uses is from groundwater sources. However, the Colorado River and these groundwater sources in the Colorado River basins have lost over 65 cubic kilometers of water over the last 9 years, with nearly 2/3 of it from groundwater loss due to over-pumping. This is because

Certain models predict that drought activity is expected to increase toward the end of the 21st century and particularly in the Colorado River Basin (MacDonald & Turner, 21260). When the dam was built in the early 20th century, annual flow was about 17.0 MAF (million acre-feet) at Lees Ferry, Arizona which is a few miles below the dam. Estimates calculating the past MAF of the Colorado River average to about 13.8-14.6 over the last 450 years. Thus, the dam was built in a period with an unexpectedly high MAF. Alarmingly in 2000 the river averaged less than 9 MAF. (Bolin, Seetharam, & Pompeii, 263). In 2002, the river reached a low of about 6.2 MAF (MacDonald & Turner, 21256). Some models estimate that the river could reach the range of 1.5 to 4.5 MAF in the next 30–50 years. (Bolin, Seetharam, & Pompeii, 271). The reduction of MAF in the Colorado River is due to drought. Droughts have been occurring throughout the 20th century with droughts from 1900-1904, 1924-1936, 1953-1964, and 1988-1991. These droughts are associated with warmer regional temperatures and the level of warming is deemed exceptional for the 21st century (MacDonald & Turner, 21257). Recently the Colorado River has experienced the lowest 5 year mean flows on record (MacDonald & Turner, 21257). If river flow is low, so is Lake Powell’s water level. One study suggests that Lake Powell have a 50% chance of receding to inoperable status by the 2020’s

1. Why was the building of the dam first proposed in 1919 and by whom?

A mass curve and double mass curve were created for the Red Deer basin at Drumheller in 1964. Precipitation data was collected from the city of Drumheller, which is approximately 0.6 km from the river measurement. On average the greatest amount of precipitation occurred in May, June, and July, but there was a large spike in precipitation in the month of September. The lowest amount of precipitation occurred in January, February and October. The double mass curve for this basin has a large gradual increase. Runoff for this basin is always greater than precipitation, but there is an area of large run off and storage during the end of the curve. This could be due to the large amount of precipitation that occurred in September, and storage

The Mono Basin Project was created to gather more water flow into Los Angeles. In 1935, the city applied to build Grant Lake Dam. According to The Fish and Game Commission determined that fishways would not be needed and they approved the construction of the dam. Upon acquiring the Long Valley reservoir, the Commission had to examine the same issue, and decided that an alternative method would have to be built to make up for the loss by both dams. Therefore, the Hot Creek Agreement was established in 1940, which required the city to provide land, water rights, and funds for the Hatchery. The Mono Basin Project was finished by 1939.

The current water shortage has left many reservoirs depleted with water. Littlerock reservoir has had a decrease in its water level in the recent years. The loss in water has had a devastating toll on the agriculture

Q1. Briefly describe the complexity of international water use, using the Rhine River or the Aral Sea as an example.