NewsLocal News

Actions

Lake Powell could become a ‘dead pool’ as climate change, political wars and unabated growth drain its waters

Posted at 9:21 AM, Jan 20, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-20 22:09:49-05

Bullfrog Marina • Ever since the Colorado River began filling Utah’s Glen Canyon and its countless side canyons in 1963, conservationists have been calling for emptying the lake that now supports a recreation economy and power generation. The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Climate change, unbridled development and Western water politics are conspiring to gradually grant this wish. The reservoir has shed an average of 155 billion gallons a year over the past two decades, the result of drought-depleted river flows coupled with rising demands from powerful downstream water users.

Without a change in how the Colorado River is managed, Lake Powell is headed toward becoming a “dead pool,” essentially useless as a reservoir while revealing a sandstone wonderland once thought drowned forever by humanity’s insatiable desire to bend nature to its will.

To read the entire article, click here.