{"id":7818,"date":"2015-05-04T05:58:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T10:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7818"},"modified":"2015-05-04T05:58:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T10:58:10","slug":"water-crisis-lake-mead-largest-us-reservoir-faces-federal-water-emergency-forced-rationing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7818","title":{"rendered":"Water Crisis: Lake Mead, Largest US Reservoir, Faces Federal \u201cWater Emergency,\u201d Forced Rationing"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/05\/03\/water-crisis-lake-mead-record-low-water-rationing-california-nevada-arizona\/\" target=\"_blank\">Water Crisis: Lake Mead, Largest US Reservoir, Faces Federal \u201cWater Emergency,\u201d Forced Rationing<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Leak Mead \u2013 on your left, when you drive from Las Vegas across the Hoover Dam \u2013 is the largest reservoir in the country when at capacity. It\u2019s fed by the Colorado River which provides water for agriculture, industry, and 40 million people in Nevada, Arizona, California, and Mexico, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.\u00a0Now after 15 years of drought, the \u201clake\u201d \u2013 a mud puddle surrounded by a huge chalky bathtub ring \u2013 is threatening to run dry.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s considered \u201coperationally full\u201d when the water level is at 1,229 feet elevation above sea level. On May 2, the water level was down to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lakemead.water-data.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u>1,078.9 feet<\/u><\/a>\u00a0above sea level, the lowest since it was being filled in May 1937. It\u2019s down 15 feet from the same day a year ago. Over the last 36 months, the water level has dropped 44.8 feet. It\u2019s down 150 feet from capacity.<\/p>\n<p>If the water level is below 1,075 feet elevation \u2013 4 feet below today\u2019s level \u2013 by January 1, 2016, it will trigger a federal water emergency. And water rationing.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reviewjournal.com\/news\/water-environment\/lake-mead-water-levels-records-continue-fall\" target=\"_blank\"><u>Las Vegas Review Journal<\/u><\/a>\u00a0reported that forecasters expect the level to drop to 1073 feet by June, before Lake Powell would begin to release\u00a0more water. Assuming \u201caverage or better snow accumulations in the mountains that feed the Colorado River \u2013 something that\u2019s happened only three times in the past 15 years,\u201d the water level on January 1 is expected to be barely above the federal shortage level.<\/p>\n<p>Even with\u00a0these somewhat rosy assumptions of \u201caverage or better than average snow accumulations,\u201d the water level would begin set new lows next April.\u00a0But if the next winter is anything like the last few, all bets are off.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water Crisis: Lake Mead, Largest US Reservoir, Faces Federal \u201cWater Emergency,\u201d Forced Rationing Leak Mead \u2013 on your left, when you drive from Las Vegas across the Hoover Dam \u2013 is the largest reservoir in the country when at capacity. It\u2019s fed by the Colorado River which provides water for agriculture, industry, and 40 million [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2965,220,5158,4152,5159,4771,866,867],"class_list":["post-7818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-colorado-river","tag-drought","tag-hoover-dam","tag-lake-mead","tag-lake-powell","tag-las-vegas","tag-water","tag-water-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7819,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7818\/revisions\/7819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}