Mead At 39% Of Capacity; Hoover's Dam's Power Output Also Down, Pushing Utilities' Rates Higher

[hatrack]

Record low levels at Lake Mead threaten hydropower generation that brings electricity to Southern California, including several Inland cities, and moves drinking water for millions of residents and farms.

The man-made lake formed by Hoover Dam now stands at 39 percent capacity, largely because of an 11-year drought on the Colorado River. It is only the third time Lake Mead has been this low since it was filled in the 1930s.

Hoover, which straddles Arizona and Nevada, is one of the Southwest's cheapest and cleanest sources of power. Electricity production at the dam has dropped along with Mead's volume. Losing that supply wouldn't leave California in the dark, but it would send utilities searching for other, more expensive sources, the cost of which would be passed on to consumers.
Story

EDIT

Electricity available from Hoover has declined 29 percent since 1980. That has local utilities buying power on the open market, where rates are up to four times higher. The cost has been passed on to consumers. Electricity is divvied up according to the Hoover Power Allocation Act of 1984, which gives 28.5 percent to Metropolitan, 15 percent to Los Angeles, 23 percent to Nevada, 18 percent to Arizona and most of the remainder to other California utilities. That legislation expires in 2017. A bill to extend the contracts by 50 years and allot 5 percent for new customers, including Native American tribes, has passed Congress and is before the Senate.

EDIT

http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_mead06.2b8c2c6.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. that is ...worrisome.

an 11 year drought, they say.
somehow, to me, the word "drought" implies it will end, and rains will come back to "normal".
Perhaps after 11 years, it is a "new" normal.

[OnlinePoker]

2. 10 feet lower than last year at this time

For the past couple of years, this has been the time of the year where things leveled off before rising 6 or 8 feet. Doesn't look like the end of the drop yet if you go by the end of the 2010 water year.

http://graphs.water-data.com/lakemead/

[XemaSab]

3. Somehow I suspect this graph is making things look worse than they are

:P

[OnlinePoker]

4. Well, if you prefer hard data...

http://lakemead.water-data.com/

[XemaSab]

5. The spillway elevation is at 1205.4 feet above sea level

and the base of the dam is at 479 feet above sea level, but the bottom of the graph only goes to 1083 feet above sea level.

Meaning that there is still quite a ways before the thing is totally empty.

[hatrack]

6. Yes, but it can never really be emptied - dead pool storage has got to be at least a few MAF

Unless you wanted to go in and rebore the diversion tunnels, which is a bit, uh, unlikely.

[XemaSab]

7. Dead pool is at 895

n/t

[OnlinePoker]

8. It depends on what you want the water for.

If it's just for drinking and irrigating crops, then I agree...there's water for some time down the road. But if it's for electricity, that's another story. From the article, and another I'll link below, below 1050 feet, the water feeding the turbines could actually damage them and so they may have to be shut down. 1050 feet is less than 34 below the current level. Lake Mead has lost 113 feet in the last 10 years, 42 of them in the last 4. In 3 to 4 years, we could see the turbines shut down completely. From my linked article, the 20th century was the wettest in the past 500 years so if the desert is going back to more normal precipitation levels, it will be hard for the lake to bounce back for the foreseeable future.

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/low-water-may-still-hoover-dam%E2%80%99s-power/

[XemaSab]

9. Trust me, I know that the situation is bad

I was just snarking on graphs that make it look like the lake is 3 feet deep. :P

[bananas]

11. It's wide at the top, but narrow at the bottom

A chart of volume rather than depth would be better.

http://www.eosnap.com/image-of-the-day/lake-mead-on-the-nevada-arizona-border-usa-august-14th-2009/

Lake Mead on the Nevada-Arizona Border, USA – August 14th, 2009
36.0N 114.7W

August 14th, 2009 Category: Climate Change, Image of the day, Lakes

The contours of the Nevada and Arizona landscape around Lake Mead and the Colorado River appear quite sharp in this orthorectified image. Filled by water impounded by the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the USA.

However, the combination of a huge demand for Lake Mead’s water and climate change has resulted in a 100 foot drop in this large lakes’s water level since 2000. Although that may not seem to be a great deal of water loss, it is important to remember that the vast reservoir is wide at the top but narrow at the bottom. This means that the 10% drop in depth actually represents a 50% loss in volume.

This huge loss happened in just nine years – The lake went form 96 percent capacity to roughly 43 percent, as of May 2009. The US Bureau of Reclamation predicts that water levels will drop another 14 feet over the summer.

Last year, researchers at the University of California San Diego concluded that if climate change goes uncurbed and water use is not reduced, Lake Mead could dry up by the year 2021.

[hatrack]

14. True enough - otherwise they wouldn't have chosen Black Canyon as the dam site

nt

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Pic courtesy of DemoTex:

Hoover Dam today (Monday 10/11)

Other eye candy at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9299279

[Nihil]

12. Worth a thousand words (as they say). (n/t)

:wow:

[Confusious]

13. Damn

When I saw it ten years ago, it was just under the bottom rings on the four towers.

Shiiit.