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Enviro Eco Nature    H1'ed 8/6/22

America's Biggest Reservoirs Hit By Dead Pool Jitters

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Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam
(Image by @CarShowShooter from flickr)
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Hoover Dam's Lake Mead is dangerously close to dead pool status for the first time since construction in the mid 1930s. A vicious hammering drought sequence for over two decades throughout the West threatens to bring America's biggest water reservoir to its knees.

In a word, the implications are unspeakable.

America's monuments, the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, and Hoover Dam, are the foundations of Americana, the essence of America, its character, its culture. Hoover Dam, one of the greatest engineering feats of all time, 96 lives lost during construction, defines America's true grit during a bygone era that had to overcome great challenges tagged with the Great Depression, soup kitchens, and breadlines (NYC 82 breadlines by 1932), the Dust Bowl, incipient fascism in Europe, and a brewing world war.

Yet, in the face of those overwhelming challenges, similar to a phoenix miraculously rising out of the ashes, in 1934 Hoover Dam's Lake Mead commenced water filling in celebration of an engineering marvel. Seven years later (1941) Hoover Dam's Lake Mead stood tall at maximum capacity of 1,220 feet elevation with sparkling blue water that shone for all to behold, becoming the most-visited dam in the world with 7 million annual visitors.

In a twist of climate change fate, and echoing the 1930s, America once again is challenged by drought, irreconcilable political squabbling, 42 million SNAPs (electronic food stamps), festering homegrown armed fascism, and entanglement in a European war, as Lake Mead returns to its beginnings of 88 years ago. Today's 1,041 feet elevation is the same as 1937, as it was then filling. But, in sharp contrast to the outlook for Lake Mead when completed in 1934 full of hope and promise, the outlook today is decidedly negative. What's changed?

Answer: The climate system has turned upside down, whether it's gushing massive flash floods, or hard-hitting severe parched droughts, there's little middle ground. It's behaving like the Mad Hatter gone off the deep end.

But, this time is vastly different from the past. Severe drought is now a worldwide phenomenon like never before. It's hitting everywhere. According to SPEI Global Drought Monitor, no continent is spared the ravages of severe drought, except for Antarctica. Major urban centers in South America (Santiago) and China (Guangzhou and Shenzhen) and Europe (100 Po Valley towns) are already rationing or instituting forced reduction of water usage.

Global heat is on the verge of breaking-out. According to NASA and NOAA, the planet is trapping nearly twice as much heat as it did in 2005, which they describe as an "unprecedented increase amid the climate crisis." NASA describes this trend as "quite alarming."

All of which leads to a conclusion that foolhardy use of fossil fuels has created a heat-machine. The evidence of the heat-machine is found by the fact that the planet is trapping twice as much heat as 17 years ago. That's an off-the-charts data point that should send shivers down anyone's spine.

For evidence of the heat-machine's powerful impact, as of June 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was forced to adopt emergency measures to restrict drawdowns, instructing the seven Colorado River Basin states to reduce water usage by 2-4 million acre-feet over the next 18 months. As for recreational purposes, 5 of 6 boating ramps are now closed.

Such an emergency never happened throughout the dam's 88-year history, until now. Something's different, something's wrong. What's next for America's important reservoirs? Is dead pool next?

Dead pool occurs when water in a reservoir drops so low that it cannot flow downstream - the dam. America's two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam, and Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam, are interconnected and at high risk of dead pool.

The risks impact all of America, as 40 million people, and 4-5 million acres of farmland depend upon the reservoirs for electric power and/or drinking and irrigation. Furthermore, the seven states of the Colorado Basin in large measure "feed the country." California alone produces 33% of the country's vegetables and 67% of the country's fruits and nuts.

Lake Mead dead pool is 895 feet and minimum power pool 1,000 feet; its current elevation is 1,041 feet.

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Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles (over 200) have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide, like Z Magazine, The (more...)
 

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