NYT - As Lake Mead Hits 49% Of Capacity, A Falling Lake Lowers All Boats

[hatrack]

EDIT

That whiteness covering the desert hillsides is a sort of bathtub ring, measuring through calcium and other mineral deposits how much the water level has dropped in Lake Mead over the years, but especially within the last decade. And if you squint and look way, way up, you can see signs at the very tops of some of those hills that, in effect, say the open air is closed to water skiing.

The melting snow on the western slopes of the Rockies feeds into the Colorado River to flow west and south, across parts of Colorado, Utah and Arizona, and, since the construction of the dam, into Lake Mead, some 30 miles east of that study in population explosion, Las Vegas. The lake’s water level has risen and fallen, like a sleeping man’s chest, but never has the drop been quite like this. “Lake Mead is at 49 percent of capacity,” says Scott Huntley, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. In other words: half empty.

True, the lake’s water level was this low 45 years ago, though Mr. Huntley attributes much of that to the filling of Lake Powell, 490 miles upriver in Utah. And true, the water level fluctuates naturally; that is why the Desert Princess’s onboard narration never utters the word “drought,” a spokeswoman explains.

But the lake was lapping at the top of Hoover Dam just two decades ago, making this drought all the more unnerving. For years its “normal” elevation ranged between 1,180 and 1,220 feet above sea level; today it is at 1,111 feet, and predicted to drop below 1,100 feet within two years. Now there are tense meetings among several states that rely on the Colorado for drinking water, power production and crop irrigation. Now the head of the water authority here attributes the drought’s length and severity to climate change. Now the operative word is “conserve.” Roxanne Dey, a National Park Service spokeswoman for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, says that believe it or not, the drought has had at least one positive impact: “It reminds people here that we live in a desert.”

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http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=87210

[phantom power]

1. I'm sure our local leaders have planned for a scenario where the water runs out.

Oh, wait, I'm not at all sure.
:puke: