Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir, is careening toward water levels not seen since the 1960s, threatening to upend power generation and intensify an already fractured debate over allocating the Colorado River's dwindling supplies to 40 million people across seven states, tribal nations, and two countries.
The reservoir currently sits at roughly 23 percent of capacity, holding about 5.6 million acre-feet of water. While it dipped to similar levels for a few months in 2023, this year marks a starkly different crisis: there was no spring recovery. Historically, snowmelt would push Lake Powell to 9.6 million acre-feet by June. Instead, a record-low snowpack and a March heatwave left the lake barely recovering at all, even after supplemental releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream. Except for those 2023 months, Lake Powell hasn't been this low since June 1965, two years after authorities began filling it.
"What's unique this year is that there was no recovery at all," said Jack Schmidt, director of Utah State University's Center for Colorado River Studies. "What we expect to happen is that Lake Powell will go to unprecedented low conditions some time this fall."
With eight months of projected decline ahead, the consequences loom large. The lake sits just 37 feet above the threshold where its hydroelectric turbines fail, potentially cutting power to nearly 6 million households and businesses that depend on Glen Canyon power plant output. Simultaneously, negotiators from California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming remain deadlocked over how to ration the shrinking water supply. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation could impose its own conservation plan as soon as next month.
For more than two decades, Lake Powell and Lake Mead downstream have contracted even as users reduced consumption. Now, experts say, the system is hitting the breaking point climate change has long threatened.
"In the 21st century, the ultimate cause of the problem is declining runoff," Schmidt said. "There's less water in the system. It's caused by a warming climate, period."
Cities racing to adapt are taking increasingly aggressive steps to secure alternative sources. Phoenix, long dependent on the Colorado River to supply residents and recharge groundwater, is now recycling sewage into drinking water. San Diego recently unveiled a plan to sell surplus water from its desalination plant to Arizona and Nevada, allowing those states to purchase unused Colorado River rights from the coastal city.
Brad Udall, a water and climate researcher at Colorado State University, argues that paying water users to exit the system entirely is the only realistic path to recovery. "There are too many straws in the glass," he said. "Rather than having an annual fight over who gets what, let's remove some straws. One way to do that is the American way, let's buy 'em out."
The crisis represents the first moment climate change is forcing a wholesale rethinking of century-old water law and interstate agreements. Udall notes that while other climate disasters allow communities to rebuild and move forward, the Colorado River system cannot. "The rules we have are completely inadequate to the task," he said.
Worst-case scenarios have surfaced fears of "deadpool," a state where the reservoir drops so low that gravity cannot push water downstream. Schmidt dismissed this as unlikely, saying authorities would intervene through forced cuts and upstream releases. Still, experts expect both Lake Powell and Lake Mead to remain severely depleted for years, delivering less water to an already parched region.
"We have control over how bad it gets," said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. "But the only thing we can do to keep it from getting bad is to take less water out."
Author James Rodriguez: "The west built its entire future on a river that can't deliver what was promised, and now the bill is due with nowhere left to hide."
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