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Major water cutbacks loom as shrinking Colorado River nears ‘moment of reckoning’
L A Times ^ | JUNE 14, 2022 | IAN JAMES

Posted on 06/14/2022 4:27:33 PM PDT by American Number 181269513

As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change, the Colorado River’s reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce risks of supplies reaching perilously low levels, a top federal water official said Tuesday.

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said during a Senate hearing in Washington that federal officials now believe protecting “critical levels” at the country’s largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require much larger reductions in water deliveries.

“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”

The needed cuts, she said, amount to between 2 million acre-feet and 4 million acre-feet next year.

For comparison, California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water per year, while Arizona’s allotment is 2.8 million acre-feet.

The push for a new emergency deal to cope with the Colorado River’s shrinking flow comes just seven months after officials from California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take significantly less water out of Lake Mead, and six weeks after the federal government announced it is holding back a large quantity of water in Lake Powell to reduce risks of the reservoir dropping to a point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate electricity.

Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels. Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.


(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Arizona; US: California; US: Colorado
KEYWORDS: arizona; california; coloradoriver; drought; lakemead; lasvegas; nevada; water; watersupply
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1 posted on 06/14/2022 4:27:33 PM PDT by American Number 181269513
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To: American Number 181269513

Trump’s fault no doubt.


2 posted on 06/14/2022 4:30:38 PM PDT by laweeks
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To: laweeks

It took 12 words to get to climate change.


3 posted on 06/14/2022 4:35:09 PM PDT by rdl6989 ( )
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To: American Number 181269513

Climate change like masks can never be questioned


4 posted on 06/14/2022 4:35:13 PM PDT by toddausauras (How far will the left go in terms of destroying our personal freedoms?)
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To: American Number 181269513

In the past 50 years, CA population quadrupled.

Not a single dam was built, and many were destroyed.

There’s a ‘shortage’, except for the green lawns out in front of corporate HQ’s and gov. buildings.

Oh, and we allow most of the Sacramento Delta [more than enough for the entire Southwest] to drain into the Pacific. To save a 2 inch fish. That lives literally everywhere.

So FU, LA Times, for pretending otherwise.


5 posted on 06/14/2022 4:35:49 PM PDT by TonyinLA ( I don't have sufficient information to make an informed opinion said no lefty ever.)
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To: American Number 181269513

We cold make the state as green as we want, if they’d simply
desalinate sea water. They refuse to do it, because they
need this issue like they needed COVID, the herd the masses.

How I despise these people.

The LA Times could advocate for good policy, but they are
as slimy as it gets.


6 posted on 06/14/2022 4:45:33 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance the flag of the U S of A, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: American Number 181269513

Just think of all the global warming study money that could’ve been spent working on desalination.


7 posted on 06/14/2022 4:46:39 PM PDT by fruser1
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To: American Number 181269513

Build a pipeline to bring water to lake Powell.


8 posted on 06/14/2022 4:48:24 PM PDT by Ben Mugged (He who lacks the will does not need the ability.)
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To: American Number 181269513

The LA Slime must be getting desperate. Click on the site and you get an internet offer of six months for one dollar. That is one dollar I will not waste. I hope that leftist billionaire who bought it goes under along with his entire crew.
Who will miss this rabid leftist rag? While Gannet is throttling its opinion pages, the LA Slime has no worries—it’s opinion page is the front cover and everything but the OP ed page. What a joke of a “newspaper.”


9 posted on 06/14/2022 4:53:07 PM PDT by Fungi
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To: American Number 181269513

Not the first drought to hit the area. There was a 25 year long drought in 1275-1300AD.


10 posted on 06/14/2022 4:55:06 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.” – Aristotl)
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To: American Number 181269513

100 years ago there was a group of non-human aliens who built the superstructures in California that harnessed and transported water from the mountains, to people near the coast, and could maintain a population twice as large as existed then.

50 years ago, the population started approaching the capacity of what the non-human aliens built, and rather than expanding the superstructures, the people of California decided that they’d figure out a way to live with ever-tightening water.

It was their choice...and now they pay.


11 posted on 06/14/2022 4:56:00 PM PDT by BobL (My hatred of Necons/Globalists exceeds my love of Ukraine or any other country, other than the US)
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To: American Number 181269513

Time to build a border fence at the California state line.

There will be about 20 to 30 million democrats, other libtards and illegals looking to escape the living hell they created as they destroyed California
and we can’t allow any more of them to escape and infect the rest of the nation with their liberal idiocy.

It also might be a good idea to just continue the fence line straight north through Oregon and Washington right to the Canadian border.

And maybe build a few gates here and there to allow conservatives and republicans to escape.


12 posted on 06/14/2022 4:56:43 PM PDT by Iron Munro ( Joe Biden - Inventor Of The First New Language since Esperanto)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Back just before Johnny Carson began hosting the Tonight Show,


13 posted on 06/14/2022 4:57:40 PM PDT by Radix (His Fraudulency Joe Biden…)
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To: TonyinLA
In the past 50 years, CA population quadrupled.

Reason #3 why we relocated out of CA.

So.CA is like a supermassive black hole consuming everything, including cash. You could fill Lake Powell with the water from millions of CA swimming pools. What a colossal waste!

And when it rains there, trillions of gallons flow out to sea via giant concrete gutters they call rivers. I've seen them 20' deep, 60 yards across, with water flowing at 20 mph, all the way to the ocean.. They're too stupid and greedy to build reservoirs to capture all that water, as they wouldn't be able to charge those increasingly higher water rates in CA.

14 posted on 06/14/2022 4:58:03 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: American Number 181269513
As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change,

Stated like it was a fact instead of a theory

15 posted on 06/14/2022 4:59:08 PM PDT by pfflier
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To: American Number 181269513

I don’t buy it.

But if so, make more dams.


16 posted on 06/14/2022 5:01:03 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Ben Mugged
There are good ideas to bring excess water from the Mississippi to the Colorado via the Green River.

Two birds with one stone, as this could alleviate flooding on the Mississippi.

Arguments against:

1. Nasty pipelines/canals desecrating sacred Indian homelands.

2. Chinese fish in Mississippi will be able to get into the Green and Colorado Rivers.

3. It'll be TOO expensive.

4. It's not sufficiently green

17 posted on 06/14/2022 5:04:05 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not a tagline.)
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To: American Number 181269513

So droughts never happened before man and his evil SUV’S? It’s all climate change’s fault. If I remember correctly, when the original settlers arrived at Jamestown in 1607, Virginia was in the middle of a historic drought. I doubt the indians and settlers were worried about climate change.


18 posted on 06/14/2022 5:04:13 PM PDT by EvilCapitalist (Sodomy is nothing to be proud of.)
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To: BobL
We know the dams were built by superintelligent aliens from another planet because we have no idea how mere humans could do that.

Also, if you measure all the dimensions and do the proper math you get the Golden Ratio and certain parts of the dams point to certain constellations which is where the aliens probably came from.

19 posted on 06/14/2022 5:06:44 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not a tagline.)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

We know the dams were built by superintelligent aliens from another planet because we have no idea how mere humans could do that.”

Or perhaps they were the Chinese, as they recently built the 3 Gorges. When did we last build something of that magnitude?


20 posted on 06/14/2022 5:09:33 PM PDT by BobL (My hatred of Necons/Globalists exceeds my love of Ukraine or any other country, other than the US)
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