"Floyd Dominy, the commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation in the 1960s, was largely responsible for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. In 1963, when the dam was completed, he could not have foreseen the climate situation we find ourselves in today, with declining snowpack, record-high temperatures and alarmingly low water levels in Lake Powell, year after year."
"But he and his engineers could have, and should have, foreseen that the way they designed the dam would leave little room to maneuver should a water-supply crisis ever impact the river and its watershed. Indeed, a state of crisis has been building on the Colorado for decades, even as the parties that claim its water argue over how to divide its rapidly diminishing flows."
Glen Canyon Dam was designed in ways that reduced operational flexibility, leaving little margin to respond to water-supply crises. Long-term warming, falling snowpack, and persistent drought have produced record high temperatures and chronically low Lake Powell levels. The seven Basin states have relied on surplus reservoir storage from wetter decades to meet entitlements that now exceed the river's contemporary flows. Negotiations among the states missed a Nov. 11 deadline for a new management plan, and the federal government postponed enforcement. Thirty tribes holding river claims have been historically excluded from negotiations. Temporary conservation has not yielded permanent usage changes.
Read at High Country News
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