Lake Powell and Lake Mead hit a grim milestone this week.
The combined storage in the nation’s two largest reservoirs has dropped to a level not seen since 1956, when Glen Canyon Dam was still under construction, according to a new paper from Jack Schmidt, Anne Castle and other Colorado River scholars.
“It is humbling and potentially disturbing to think about the fact that … we haven’t had that little water in the bank account since before Lake Powell even existed,” said Schmidt, the director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.
The two reservoirs hold almost 60% of the water stored in the Colorado River system. As of July 12, Mead was 27% full and Powell was 24% full, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Read the full article by Brooke Larsen at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.