Watch: Why Lake Mead is losing water

Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir successful the U.S., is astir to scope its lowest constituent since the installation of the Hoover Dam successful the 1930s.

The water is 34 percent afloat with a h2o level of 1,067 feet arsenic of aboriginal August. Any lower, Nevada runs the hazard of not having capable power.

Decades of drought and accrued h2o needs person strained the indispensable assets that supplies drinking h2o and hydroelectric powerfulness for 40 cardinal people, and irrigation for much than 5 cardinal acres of farmland crossed 7 Western states and Mexico.

Ten percent of Lake Mead’s h2o comes from precipitation and groundwater, the different 90 percent comes from the Colorado River, which stretches 1,450 miles starting connected the westbound slope of Rocky Mountain National Park.

But the stream is experiencing its 22nd consecutive twelvemonth of drought, with this past twelvemonth being the worst recorded successful 1,200 years, according to the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.

So what is being done astir the h2o shortage?

Lake Mead volition acquisition its archetypal federally declared h2o shortage adjacent year. The declaration, triggered by h2o level projections released Monday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, volition unit Nevada to slash its allocation of Colorado River h2o successful 2022.

Monday’s h2o level projections volition besides alteration operations astatine the Glen Canyon Dam, which releases h2o downstream to Lake Mead from Lake Powell.

It volition instrumentality a corporate effort to support this captious h2o resource.

Stephanie Castillo is simply a 2021 Mass Media reporting chap done the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Follow her connected Twitter @PhutureDoctors.