lake powell
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Reclamation: Upper Basin reservoirs insufficient to save Lake Powell
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Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which Bureau of Reclamation officials have used twice during the past two years to add water to the rapidly deteriorating Colorado River system, likely has only enough water left for two more emergency releases, according reclamation officials. Last summer, the Bureau of Reclamation ordered the release of 125,000 acre-feet of water from…
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Ignored for decades, Colorado River tribes fight for their water rights
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MONUMENT VALLEY, Utah • Navajo Nation residents in pickup trucks rumbled along dusty dirt roads in the ethereal painted desert of Monument Valley in August to a well where they fill up water tanks, sometimes multiple times a day. The well spigot in the dirt parking lot next to a shuttered post office in Goulding, Utah, is…
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Drought threatens Colorado River hydropower, major source of renewable energy
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PAGE, ARIZ. • Soulful notes from a Native American flute float over the vast valley on the backside of the Glen Canyon Dam, which interrupts the once mighty Colorado River. At the tourist overlook, a teen — his phone in hand, playing the music — hops from one phyllo-layered sandstone outcropping to another, where river, rock…
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With the feds ‘light’ on steps, Colorado’s water experts explore challenges, opportunities
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Several of Colorado’s water experts on Thursday noted that the federal government’s plan for tackling dwindling Colorado River reservoirs is “light” on the next steps but that the river’s condition also offers opportunities to boost resiliency among Western states. “It’s a dismaying time, but one full of opportunity,” said attorney James Eklund of Sherman &…
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Why California was spared and Arizona hammered: A brief history of Colorado River agreements
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Tuesday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that it would require Arizona and Nevada to reduce their annual allocation of water from the Colorado River came as no surprise to most water experts. The reductions announced by Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton have been part of a long-standing agreement, known as the interim guidelines, since…
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Monsoon moisture takes a little out of the drought, water watchers say
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The early arrival of summer monsoons in late June has been a welcome sight for a parched state, but the rains have not been enough to put an end to the drought. Colorado water watchers from federal and state agencies and local water providers, known as the Water Availability Task Force, couldn’t have been happier…
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Federal government’s ‘underwhelming’ plan for the Colorado River falls short of goal
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For 62 days, the seven states of the Colorado River faced a mandate to come up with a plan to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water by 2023. Failing to do so, Commissioner Camille Touton of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation warned, would mean the federal government exercising its authority to come up with…
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Arizona, Nevada to see Colorado River cuts under federal plan; California unscathed
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Update 4 Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for water and science at Interior, added in both the lower and upper basins, the Bureau of Reclamation will look at physical modifications to Hoover and Glen Canyon dams to see if there is a way to allow water to be released below either critically low levels at Glen Canyon…