Blue Mesa, Biggest CO Reservoir @ 30%- Lowest On Record; Net September Powell Inflow 1,000 AF
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This low water year in western Colorado, part of a longer-term drought dating back nearly 20 years, is exposing not just onetime valuables, but also the vulnerabilities of the region to negative consequences when the snow and rain refuse to fall. Beaches closed at reservoirs, and boat ramps were left high and dry. So were some irrigators, particularly ones with junior water rights who in some cases got essentially no irrigation water this year. The first-ever call went out on the Yampa River, resulting in curtailment of water use by some water rights holders.
The water level at Blue Mesa Reservoir is at just 30 percent of capacity. It's at 81 feet below full pool elevation. Nicki Gibney, an aquatic biologist with the National Park Service, said that's the second-lowest ever since the reservoir first filled. She's been dealing with one outcome of the low water levels — an outbreak of unsafe levels of cyanotoxins created by algae in the Iola Basin section of the reservoir. While it can harm humans, it's a particular threat to dogs because of their propensity to drink water from lakes.
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The Bureau of Reclamation says unregulated inflows to Lake Powell for the 2018 water year totaled 4.76 million acre-feet, or 44 percent of the 30-year average, making it the third-driest year on record. Unregulated inflows are calculated amounts designed to indicate what flows would be if not influenced by operations at upstream reservoirs. The unregulated inflow into Lake Powell in September was a mere thousand acre-feet, the lowest on record. It's so low that the Bureau of Reclamation rounds it off as being 0 percent of average. The second-lowest September unregulated inflows occurred in 2012 and totaled about 100,000 acre-feet.
The Bureau of Reclamation says unregulated inflows into Powell were above average just four out of the past 19 years. The reservoir's storage is currently at 45 percent of capacity, and water officials in the Upper Colorado River Basin are hard at work pursuing drought contingency measures, potentially including measures to reduce demand, to keep Powell from falling too low. Should it empty too much further, that would threaten its ability to produce, and generate revenues from, hydropower, and to deliver water to downstream states to comply with a 1922 interstate compact.
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https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/western_colorado/low-and-dry/article_1921f368-da68-11e8-8dae-10604b9f6eda.html
