Should Lake Powell Be Drained?
Save it or drain it?
Editors note: “The Megadrought Series” has always been about how climate change affects the Colorado River Basin states, where growth is outstripping water availability. With this mini-series within a series, we’ll take a closer look at the six most problematic areas of the megadrought. Those are Lake Powell, Lake Mead, the Colorado River itself, Arizona, California and Nevada, and finally, a piece on other notably troubled areas west of the 100th Meridian. An index of all past stories can be found at the bottom of today’s article on Lake Powell. It’s not all doomsaying. Some action is taking place in the form of possible solutions, as the people and the legislators are now realizing the river can’t sustain the strains of 40 million users. Unfortunately, those actions just may not be popular.
Introduction
In the summer of 2021, I went to Lake Powell to see for myself what the fuss was all about. Between the summers of 2021 and 2022, the lake receded fifty feet. Looking at pictures of the lake in the summer of 2022, bluffs that were islands just a year earlier are rising from the lake floor. One can easily hike to them.
All that stands between Lake Powell being empty, for all intents and purposes, is 38 feet. That marker is known as the “minimum power pool,” when the lake’s surface would…
