While I was looking through my photos to grab some Mount Washington pics I came across this guy.
This is a photo I took of Lake Mead while standing on the Hoover Dam sometime in 1998.
Pretty much the same view from 2021.
US West Drought
- rkovars
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US West Drought
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
Jack London
Jack London
- Thunder1
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Re: US West Drought
Lake Meade is currently at about 30% of it's 1998 capacity, right?
Ebels are a lot like women that lack a lowcut dress that zips up the side..neither gets the love that they deserve..
- Robotaz
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Re: US West Drought
I live on the Colorado River and last month it was flowing 14% of normal.
I’m moving to Tennessee soon and am very concerned about what is going to happen in the southwest after I’m gone.
I’m moving to Tennessee soon and am very concerned about what is going to happen in the southwest after I’m gone.
Re: US West Drought
Those photos are truly frightening. Is this due to lack of rain, increased population in the surrounding areas, increased use of water on the surrounding area's golf courses, bit of all of these?
- Thunder1
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Re: US West Drought
Lack of rain...
Ebels are a lot like women that lack a lowcut dress that zips up the side..neither gets the love that they deserve..
- Robotaz
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Re: US West Drought
Less precipitation as a whole, less snowpack and runoff, combined with increasing users, combined with horrible planning. Most of Colorado had an almost normal snowpack this year, but everything is so dry that the Colorado River barely had a June increase, and it only lasted 2-3 weeks. I walk along the river every day and watch it.Mikkei4 wrote:Those photos are truly frightening. Is this due to lack of rain, increased population in the surrounding areas, increased use of water on the surrounding area's golf courses, bit of all of these?
- Robotaz
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Re: US West Drought
I forgot to mention something I learned about the Colorado River problems back in engineering school in Arizona.
I took an elective environmental engineering course and we had a guest speaker visit who was an attorney specializing in “riparian water law”, which is the primitive basis for how water is distributed, and itself a major problem with management.
Anyway, he said the the US Army Corps of Engineers studied the Colorado River’s flow for 5 years and based their designs on the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams off of those flows. Well, turns out those 5 years happen to have been 1,000 year high flow years. This created problems regarding basically every aspect of the dams’ performances. What we’re seeing are reservoirs that are receiving much more normal, and now historic low, flow rates.
There’s a lot going on, but what we are seeing are dams that use way more water than they should to generate electricity. Sediment is building rapidly in Lake Powell and reducing its volume. All kinds of problems that really didn’t present themselves until flow rates became less than normal. Now it’s just a trainwreck and I don’t see any practical solutions beyond pipelining desalinated water to cities from the west coast. The only alternative is for flow rates to increase on their own, and I think expecting that is reckless at this point.
I took an elective environmental engineering course and we had a guest speaker visit who was an attorney specializing in “riparian water law”, which is the primitive basis for how water is distributed, and itself a major problem with management.
Anyway, he said the the US Army Corps of Engineers studied the Colorado River’s flow for 5 years and based their designs on the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams off of those flows. Well, turns out those 5 years happen to have been 1,000 year high flow years. This created problems regarding basically every aspect of the dams’ performances. What we’re seeing are reservoirs that are receiving much more normal, and now historic low, flow rates.
There’s a lot going on, but what we are seeing are dams that use way more water than they should to generate electricity. Sediment is building rapidly in Lake Powell and reducing its volume. All kinds of problems that really didn’t present themselves until flow rates became less than normal. Now it’s just a trainwreck and I don’t see any practical solutions beyond pipelining desalinated water to cities from the west coast. The only alternative is for flow rates to increase on their own, and I think expecting that is reckless at this point.
- Robotaz
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Re: US West Drought
Here’s the Gunnison River a few miles before it drops into the Colorado. Flow looks great on this river. We had a lot of rain recently. 2-3 days straight.
- richtel
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Re: US West Drought
I wonder to what degree the never-ending thirst for power generated by the Hoover hydro has demanded increased flow which has exacerbated the problem. The scale of near-by LV is jaw-dropping.
Rich
"The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you're the pilot."
"The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you're the pilot."
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