Lake Mead record low water level

[Russ]

I wonder how much water is lost to evaporation in those fountains in Las Vegas. Might be time to pause them.

[dlandersson]

One of the charts in that video shows that California gets 58% of the discharge fron Lake Mead. Nevada gets 4%. So if California can skip flushig for ONE day, that equals ALL the water Nevada gets.

I wonder how much water is lost to evaporation in those fountains in Las Vegas. Might be time to pause them.

[Highlander]

Up here in BC we,ve had enough rain & run-off since Nov & still raining never seems to stop to fill lake mead & other,s ten fold we r into June already & ever time I go to work on the boat it pours it,s 10th june & averaging only 11C even colder with wind chill , pita weather I need to remove my full enclosure to do some work on the boat like replacing lower & middle shrouds checking jib & genny furler forestays ain,t doing it in the rain , need to pull her out to get the bottom paint done as well

I hate to see what,s gonna happen to Calif. if they don,t start making major cut backs on water use & waste like pools , water falls , lush green lawns , car washes sh_t I have,nt washed my trk in 4 yrs I leave that for mother nature

J

[Russ]

One of the charts in that video shows that California gets 58% of the discharge fron Lake Mead. Nevada gets 4%. So if California can skip flushig for ONE day, that equals ALL the water Nevada gets.

"Southern Nevada gets nearly 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River, which begins as snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains."
https://www.lvvwd.com/water-system/wher ... index.html

And yea, California needs to cut back also.

And it needs to rain/snow more in the Rockies.

Our lake FINALLY has enough water to launch. Hopefully, the docks are now floating. It's the middle of June and we haven't used the boat once.

[dlandersson]

Someth9ng I don't see discussed much, perfect for the current administration.
Take all the affected companies by the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, build a pipeline from a Missisippi tributaty over to near the head of the Colorado river, divert some of the extra water we have. Lord knows, a LOT of it is overflow/going to waste. Just the last two year, the Greak Lakes were overflowing their boundaries. We'd never miss it and the mountain states need it.

One of the charts in that video shows that California gets 58% of the discharge fron Lake Mead. Nevada gets 4%. So if California can skip flushig for ONE day, that equals ALL the water Nevada gets.

"Southern Nevada gets nearly 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River, which begins as snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains."
https://www.lvvwd.com/water-system/wher ... index.html

And yea, California needs to cut back also.

And it needs to rain/snow more in the Rockies.

Our lake FINALLY has enough water to launch. Hopefully, the docks are now floating. It's the middle of June and we haven't used the boat once.

[Russ]

Someth9ng I don't see discussed much, perfect for the current administration.
Take all the affected companies by the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, build a pipeline from a Missisippi tributaty over to near the head of the Colorado river, divert some of the extra water we have. Lord knows, a LOT of it is overflow/going to waste. Just the last two year, the Greak Lakes were overflowing their boundaries. We'd never miss it and the mountain states need it.

That would be quite a gigantic public works project. Probably much bigger than the Hoover dam. Getting it over the Rockies would be a trick. Maybe under the Rockies.

But a great idea. Imagine being able to divert the excess water to where needed.

[dlandersson]

Pretty sure the upper Colorado is east of the Rockies.

Someth9ng I don't see discussed much, perfect for the current administration.
Take all the affected companies by the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, build a pipeline from a Missisippi tributaty over to near the head of the Colorado river, divert some of the extra water we have. Lord knows, a LOT of it is overflow/going to waste. Just the last two year, the Greak Lakes were overflowing their boundaries. We'd never miss it and the mountain states need it.

That would be quite a gigantic public works project. Probably much bigger than the Hoover dam. Getting it over the Rockies would be a trick. Maybe under the Rockies.

But a great idea. Imagine being able to divert the excess water to where needed.

[OverEasy]

Hmmmm………..a pipeline from the upper Mississippi to Lake Mead….hmmmm

Reminds me of a middle school teacher I had who firmly believed that the Mediterranean drained down into the Nile River because it was below the Mediterranean on the map… … and somehow I got in trouble for trying to correct her with both the Principal and my Mom for being impertinent enough to challenge a ‘God Fearing’ teacher…. Never mind my being right …( When I took the time a decade and a half later to wish her well on her retirement she was still mad at me )

Too bad that it will never happen… Given how there is a cadre of people who will grouse about wasteful government spending anytime it’s for the public benefit vs lining the personal pockets of some corporation stock price portfolios of Wall Street I don’t see how a Mississippi to Lake Mead pipeline would even get a civil discussion with the conspiracy addle brained of today populated with “nimby”s and legacy ‘me 1st’s and pseudo environmentalistic mumbo-jumbo narratives….

It’s not the first time something like a Mississippi to Lake Mead aqueduct has popped up.
(Some old guy named Solomon said ‘there is nothing new under the sun’…or something to that effect)
Back in the 1960s, back when people wanted to go to the moon and back safely, actually build something’s that lasted and had a dream of a more rational country of equal rights there was a serious engineering study done by the imminent engineering firm of Ralph Parsons titled
NAWAPA - North American Water &Power Alliance.
This was the genesis of nearly all the subsequent and current proposals that have been put forward since.
Ralph Parsons spent $Millions$ of his own funds (now over a $Billion$ in today’s money) on the engineering study.
It was ambitious and was to benefit Canada as well as Mexico in addition to the United States as a means to provide water from where there was a consistent surplus to where it was in consistent short supply.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ni ... saved-amer

Imagine a mutually beneficial North American Continental Cooperative water transfer system designed to be of actual long term benefit to three countries, individuals, farmers, towns and cities…… A North American Continent international cooperative project that could have provided not only water but tens of thousands of good productive intelligent jobs for generations …. as well as a plan for future expansion of the system to preemptively grow with changing needs. All of it feasible and doable without any ‘yet to be invented’ or ‘make believe’ alien technologies. Up hill pumping energy mitigated vis hundreds of down hill power recover generation turbines… The effective use of wind and solar power supplement generation to drive the pumps and efficiently store energy for later use when and where needed…

Even for those heady times, NAWAPA was a grand plan. It proposed to tap some of the continent’s largest rivers — including the Yukon in Alaska, and the Peace and Fraser in British Columbia — and store most of it in an enormous valley that runs the length of British Columbia, turning the much of the valley into a reservoir 500 miles long. (Lake Mead on the Colorado River, the largest reservoir in the United States, is 112 miles long when full.) A canal would carry fresh water from British Columbia 2,000 miles east to the Great Lakes, diluting their polluted waters and, not incidentally, opening a commercial waterway from Vancouver to Lake Superior. Other canals, tunnels, and pumps would send water from the reservoir in British Columbia to some of the driest regions of the United States and Mexico: the inland Pacific Northwest, the Great Basin, Southern California and the desert Southwest, and the northern Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

Imagine sailing a 500 mile lake!
Imagine sailing across the width of the North American Continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice-versa! (& back too!)
Imagine the tremendous long term economic stimulus, opportunity and recreation this would have provided the nearly endless generations of Canadians, Mexicans and Americans!

Just a thought…… it sure would be nice to plan for a better productive future collectively… rather than continuing to line the pockets of a few….

Best Regards
Over Easy







Meanwhile the Chinese South-North water distribution program marches on toward a 2050 completion (providing 100s of thousands of jobs now and in the future) that will provide it with not only enough water for the next 300 years but near energy independence from fossil fuels along with a roadmap for future development growth across a broad spectrum including recreational opportunities.

[Russ]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ni ... saved-amer

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

[pitchpolehobie]

Seems like an absolute nightmare for rapid introduction of invasive species and rapid population selection and deletion. Glad to see this monstrosity never made it off the drawing board.

Hmmmm………..a pipeline from the upper Mississippi to Lake Mead….hmmmm

Reminds me of a middle school teacher I had who firmly believed that the Mediterranean drained down into the Nile River because it was below the Mediterranean on the map… … and somehow I got in trouble for trying to correct her with both the Principal and my Mom for being impertinent enough to challenge a ‘God Fearing’ teacher…. Never mind my being right …( When I took the time a decade and a half later to wish her well on her retirement she was still mad at me )

Too bad that it will never happen… Given how there is a cadre of people who will grouse about wasteful government spending anytime it’s for the public benefit vs lining the personal pockets of some corporation stock price portfolios of Wall Street I don’t see how a Mississippi to Lake Mead pipeline would even get a civil discussion with the conspiracy addle brained of today populated with “nimby”s and legacy ‘me 1st’s and pseudo environmentalistic mumbo-jumbo narratives….

It’s not the first time something like a Mississippi to Lake Mead aqueduct has popped up.
(Some old guy named Solomon said ‘there is nothing new under the sun’…or something to that effect)
Back in the 1960s, back when people wanted to go to the moon and back safely, actually build something’s that lasted and had a dream of a more rational country of equal rights there was a serious engineering study done by the imminent engineering firm of Ralph Parsons titled
NAWAPA - North American Water &Power Alliance.
This was the genesis of nearly all the subsequent and current proposals that have been put forward since.
Ralph Parsons spent $Millions$ of his own funds (now over a $Billion$ in today’s money) on the engineering study.
It was ambitious and was to benefit Canada as well as Mexico in addition to the United States as a means to provide water from where there was a consistent surplus to where it was in consistent short supply.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ni ... saved-amer

Imagine a mutually beneficial North American Continental Cooperative water transfer system designed to be of actual long term benefit to three countries, individuals, farmers, towns and cities…… A North American Continent international cooperative project that could have provided not only water but tens of thousands of good productive intelligent jobs for generations …. as well as a plan for future expansion of the system to preemptively grow with changing needs. All of it feasible and doable without any ‘yet to be invented’ or ‘make believe’ alien technologies. Up hill pumping energy mitigated vis hundreds of down hill power recover generation turbines… The effective use of wind and solar power supplement generation to drive the pumps and efficiently store energy for later use when and where needed…

Even for those heady times, NAWAPA was a grand plan. It proposed to tap some of the continent’s largest rivers — including the Yukon in Alaska, and the Peace and Fraser in British Columbia — and store most of it in an enormous valley that runs the length of British Columbia, turning the much of the valley into a reservoir 500 miles long. (Lake Mead on the Colorado River, the largest reservoir in the United States, is 112 miles long when full.) A canal would carry fresh water from British Columbia 2,000 miles east to the Great Lakes, diluting their polluted waters and, not incidentally, opening a commercial waterway from Vancouver to Lake Superior. Other canals, tunnels, and pumps would send water from the reservoir in British Columbia to some of the driest regions of the United States and Mexico: the inland Pacific Northwest, the Great Basin, Southern California and the desert Southwest, and the northern Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

Imagine sailing a 500 mile lake!
Imagine sailing across the width of the North American Continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice-versa! (& back too!)
Imagine the tremendous long term economic stimulus, opportunity and recreation this would have provided the nearly endless generations of Canadians, Mexicans and Americans!

Just a thought…… it sure would be nice to plan for a better productive future collectively… rather than continuing to line the pockets of a few….

Best Regards
Over Easy







Meanwhile the Chinese South-North water distribution program marches on toward a 2050 completion (providing 100s of thousands of jobs now and in the future) that will provide it with not only enough water for the next 300 years but near energy independence from fossil fuels along with a roadmap for future development growth across a broad spectrum including recreational opportunities.

[OverEasy]

Hi Pitchpolephobie and Russ

Thanks for the like Russ!
It is interesting that the idea of balancing water availability with water need was looked at so throughly!
There could have been a near end to coal and fuel oil burning for power generation for western Canada and the US by now if only the hydro power aspect had been realized. The mega oil corporations and coal companies most likely wouldn’t have liked it but those industries jobs would have been dwarfed by the lasting profitable stable construction and maintenance jobs never mind all the related supporting industries and smaller businesses.

The natural world never was perfect… there are the lamprey ells, Asian carp, zebra mussels, pizzlies and about an untold number of other invasive that existed and would have by natural selection have all expanded beyond their origins given time.
Not saying that they haven’t been helped along but change is the only constant…bet the dinosaurs had thier “awws@$t” moments (actually they had a couple of them).

It’s been reported that the Corinthian Canal and the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal actually improved biodiversity rather than harmed it. I’m not a great fan of zebra fish or sea snakes or ash borers but they or some other creatures would have eventually spread out to new territory.

People have on net changed things for the better when they made and improved infrastructures. Yes there have been some things that weren’t fully thought out and others have taken inept and dangerous short cuts ( chain link bridges and ill designed poorly maintained dams come to mind). I’d much rather be alive to day than live in the 1400s for example.

The NAWAPA system could have provided a developmental cooperative roadmap for other regions of the world to have changed things for the better for countless people in a peaceful constructive manner around the world . Having been fortunate enough to have met people who have shared their life stories of drought, starvation, economic ruin, environmental collapse due to a ‘simple’ lack of fresh water without having to have had to personally experience it I can’t say that the trade-off wouldn’t be worth it if it could be done.

The climate change we are actively contending with today might never have been.
It’s projected that the hydro power from China’s considerably smaller water reallocation program will out strip all their coal fired power generation (and then some) for several generations. Their reduction in environmental disruption from mining and their carbon foot print is tremendous.

The Lake Mead irrigation changed a desert into a bread basket .
The electrical power generation transformed useless vacant land into thriving healthy towns and cities.
Now, due to not only the change in climate, but a lack of constructive cooperative foresight that bread basket is in peril with substantial consequences to millions of people here in North American and the millions of people in countries located in other geographic regions.

I appreciate the differing viewpoints but I also appreciate what could have been and can be with a cooperative constructive planned approach to changing things for the better.

It’s just an interesting concept that is being talked about again but has a legacy going back 70 odd years from the creative efforts of an individual who could grasp the lasting benefit of constructive change….. maybe someday ……

Best Regards
Over Easy

[OverEasy]

Well, as bad as things are it continues to get worse for Lake Mead….



The continued decline in water level is triggering new additional restrictions on distribution.
Not mentioned as yet is the substantial impact the lower water levels are having and will continue to have on power generation capability. The lowering water head reduces the force with which the generator turbines can react with…so less water height means less generation capability for a given amount of water…to maintain given amount power generation capability with lower water pressure would normally require more water to flow through the turbines which would further drain Lake Mead.

A preliminary look (far from in-depth or worthy of references) at the power grid generation capabilities in the Lake Mead regional grid would appear to indicate that there would be a deficit if Lake Mead power generation were to go off-line.

Maybe someone with more research skills than I might be able to shed more light (pun not intended) on this aspect?

Best Regards
Over Easy

[dlandersson]

Lake Mead 17 June 2022 update

[OverEasy]

Can’t help but have that sinking feeling as the water level continues to drop…
Too bad all that surplus flooding Yellowstone River drains up and over to the Missouri River… it wasn’t all that long ago that people in the Missouri River Basin were flooded out… too bad there isn’t a means to constructively develop a water management system on a large scale … you know ..something to redirect water from where there is a surplus as in flooding to where there is a drought… something creative and beneficial to multiple millions of people for generations to come…..

[dlandersson]

Ditto

… too bad there isn’t a means to constructively develop a water management system on a large scale … you know ..something to redirect water from where there is a surplus as in flooding to where there is a drought… something creative and beneficial to multiple millions of people for generations to come…..