Colorado River Basin

As water levels in Lake Powell keep dropping, activists say Glen Canyon Dam is in need of upgrades to its plumbing so it can keep sending water downstream.

Following a legacy of mining, organizations in Crested Butte keep tabs on water quality. Maintaining healthy waters is critical as the area is a headwaters source of the Colorado River.

More than 150 scientists will research snow and water for two years in the East River watershed near Crested Butte, Colorado. The project tracking weather patterns from ‘atmosphere to bedrock’ is the first of its kind.

The reservoir provides recreation like boating and fishing, powers thousands of homes through hydroelectricity and stores water for Lake Powell and other downstream users. The reservoir is critically low, and it’s possible water levels may be lowered even further in 2022.

A few weeks ago, residents of a mobile home park in Gunnison were without water for most of the day; the three wells that supply water are often unreliable. Those who live in the park have been speaking up for years without result. While some in the valley struggle with reliable water, a few Gunnison residents worked on a new state initiative to address equity in water issues in Colorado.

Prior appropriation is the water law in the West that determines how water is divided among users. Most of the water in the Colorado River Basin is used for agriculture. Increasingly, Colorado is designating rights to streams themselves as rivers and drought continues to shrink water supplies.

If the water level at the country's second-largest reservoir drops about another 30 feet, the Glen Canyon Dam will be unable to create hydroelectric power.

Hager, who covers the Colorado River for KUNC, says the nation’s second largest reservoir is strained by more than two decades of drought.

A new plan will release water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, a measure designed to boost dropping levels in Lake Powell. The releases come as a response to record lows, which are on course to drop too low to generate hydropower at the Glen Canyon dam. The Drought Response Operations Plan brings together the four states of the upper Colorado River basin – Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico – and the federal government.

Water from Colorado’s Blue Mesa reservoir was sent to Lake Powell in the summer of 2021. It was an emergency move to help the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. keep producing hydropower.