Christopher R German

The Bureau of Reclamation announced this week in a call-in press conference, that they would be releasing 500,000 acre feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir over the next year to bolster ebbing water levels at Lake Powell. They went onto announce a retention of 450,000 acre feet already in Lake Powell, from downstream Lake Mead, in an effort to prop up operations of the Multi-Billion-dollar hydro electric dam on the Utah/Arizona line. A dam that has been in jeopardy of failure since MidMarch when lake levels dropped below their safe operating parameters of 3525 feet. Their claim is that by adding the additional water and retaining the water allocated for Lake Mead, they would achieve a 16-foot rise in water levels and keep the dam supplying electricity to several million residents of the Southwest. The problem is they are.. (clearing my throat)...prevaricating. Whether intentional or incidental, the BOR is miss-characterizing the effect of their action, and none of the media in attendance at that press conference seemed to notice. Journalist are just not good at math it seems, and neither are government officials at the BOR. Here's why. The 450,000 acre feet is already in the lake right now at at an elevation of 3522. That won't raise the lake an inch, because it's already there. The addition of 500,000 acre feet, according to the BOR, would raise the lake 16 feet... if you poured it all in one day. They are planning on adding the 500,000 acre feet over the next year which if you divide the estimated 16 feet by twelve months (their math), you get an average of 1.3 feet of rise per month. So even with the proposed increased inflows and decreased out flows, the maximum lake level rise will get the lake up to 3524 feet- one foot below the parameter they established for safe operation of the dam. Now add in the fact that 8 percent of the lake evaporates, especially in the 120 degree heat of southern Utah desert summer and the fact that usage of the lake will go up with increasing populations. Add in a factor for failed conservation tactics and any way you slice it, that 1.3 feet will be used up. Even in a best case scenario, the lake will not rise and in all likelihood will slip closer and closer to dead pool. If you saw our interview with Glen Canyon Institute head, Erik Balken earlier this week, he said, “Even with those very drastic efforts, it’s still projected that Lake Powell is going to be within spitting distance of minimum power pool in less than a year. I don’t think anyone is going to say otherwise, even from the water agencies. They all know, it is just temporary, and it’s just buying them time.” But the BOR did say that it would raise the lake 16', and either they are clueless or they are outright lying. There is no way anyone could possibly believe that 500,000 additional acre feet, a mere fraction of the nearly 6 Million acre feet in the lake right now, can raise the level 16 feet for a whole year. What's more, as a reporter from a national news source asked in the press conference, “this effort seems (at the very) best reactive?” “Reactive” seems to be a very diplomatic term when this lake has been below grade for at least a month and a half and the extra 500,000 acre feet has been available for transfer since the beginning of the year and before. In the Navy, if a Captain runs his Trillion dollar aircraft carrier into waters that are too shallow for safe operations or outside Standard Operating Procedure (S.O.P), his career is over. If the BOR runs a Trillion dollar dam that serves millions of people out of S.O.P., no one seems to care. Why the double standard? Not only has the BOR displayed failure of duty to protect that dam, they have also demonstrated a tone deaf posture when it comes to rectifying the situation. The only thing that was said in the press conference this week the might suggest some forward thinking , came from the *** who said, “we are looking for input from anyone who can suggest a solution to this?” They don't know how to fix it and it's time for some one to come up with a big solution.