• This wall probably prevents rocks from sliding into the turbines during a flood.
  • Series of buoys to keep boats out.

Hoover Dam / Fool's Paradise (7 Sept 08)

Las Vegas obtains 90-percent of their water from Lake Mead. They hafta spend $2-billion for a lower syphon. The Middle of the dam is the Nevada-Arizona border.

Maximum electric power produced by the water turbines: 2.08 gigawatts
Approximate power output: 4 billion KWh per year (i.e. $200 million at $0.05 per kWh)
Source: Wikipedia, Hoover Dam.

Historical Graph of Lake Mead Water Levels Updated every month.

By July 2009, the water is expected to decline below the 1965 level, just 17 feet above the 1,075-foot elevation that would trigger the first shortage declaration under a sweeping interstate pact signed in December 2007. Read more HERE.

The minimum power pool elevation (necessary to generate electricity) is 1050-feet. (The lake bottom is 720-feet.) The elevation, June 2009 = 1095.26 ft. With more water released from Lake Powell power generation will last until 2017 at current rates of consumption.

This link shows (at page 15): Lake Powell dead pool elevation = 3370. In the last 150-days Lake Powell dropped 15 feet, current elevation (January 9, 2010) is 3624 ft., dead pool elevation = 3370; 254 divided by 15 = 16.9 x 150 divided by 365 = 6.9 years until Lake Powell reaches dead pool = 2017.

According to a February, 2008 scientific report, "Lake Mead's water level could drop below the dead storage elevation by 2021 and the reservoir could drop below minimum power pool elevation as early as 2017." Source: "Lake Mead could be dry by 2021".

Tucson uses about 130,000 acre feet of water per year.
The Coachella Valley & Imperial Irrigation Districts use 2,600,000 acre feet of water per year.
Non-Indian agricultural Central Arizona Project (Canal) water uses 364,968 acre-feet per year.
Agriculture consumes 70-percent of the water in Arizona or 4,400,000 acre-feet per year.

Good story in the April 6, 2010 edition of Tucson Weekly on the future of the Colorado River.

This image is on WikiHow and Wikihow, "How to Plan a Grand Canyon Vacation".

Comments and faves

  1. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (54 months ago | reply)

    Hoover Dam (16 Nov 07)
    November 16, 2007


    This photo by Raynaldo Garcia: February 26, 2006

  2. ★

    Pluganator added this photo to his favorites. (53 months ago)

  3. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (52 months ago | reply)

    Today's "Arizona Daily Star" had an article where Jonathan Overpeck, an Arizona climate expert said in a report:

    1. Temps in Phoenix may hit the 130's by the second half of this century due to Global Warming.

    2. 30% chance Lake Mead & Lake Powell could go dry by 2050, which is better than a previous report that says it will dry up in 2021.

  4. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (51 months ago | reply)


    This photo by slgwv: June 1983 (After a flood.)

  5. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (49 months ago | reply)


    This photo by Ben Lee: 6 April 2009

  6. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (47 months ago | reply)


    This photo by timaz: 4 July 2009

  7. Birkenzweig (46 months ago | reply)

    Hi, I'm an admin for a group called hydraulic engineering / Wasserbau, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

  8. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (45 months ago | reply)

    Hoover Dam Sunrise
    September 8, 2009.

  9. ★

    کراچی and MMC/manelo added this photo to their favorites.

  10. bredlo (36 months ago | reply)

    This is really, really freaky to scroll down and see less and less water.
    I'm sure a lot of attention is being paid to this, but hopefully the right people are paying attention.

  11. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (34 months ago | reply)

    Lake Mead at 54-year low, stirring rationing fear

    Drought-stricken Lake Mead has dropped an additional 10 feet since last summer. [snip]

    Before year's end, the lake will likely sink to within 9 feet of the level that would trigger the first round of restrictions - and the first such restrictions ever on the river. The restrictions begin with a reduction in water deliveries to Nevada and Arizona, where farmers would be affected first. [snip]

    Lake Mead water levels determine drought status on the river under a set of guidelines adopted in 2007 by the seven Colorado River states: Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

    If the lake reaches the first drought trigger, measured at an elevation of 1,075 feet above sea level, water deliveries below Lake Mead are reduced by a little more than 10 percent. Additional cutbacks would occur if the lake continued to drop.

    The reservoir is now at an elevation of 1,087 feet above sea level - its lowest level since 1956 - and is projected to drop an additional 3 feet this year. [snip]

    If the reservoir fell below elevation 1,050 feet, one of the tunnels Nevada uses to draw water from the lake would sit above the waterline and would be useless. Nevada is working on a new, deeper tunnel, but it is not expected to be completed before 2012.

    Read more: Arizona Republic, 12 August 2010.

  12. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (31 months ago | reply)

    Article in the New York Times about the "Day of Reckoning" for Lake Mead, 28 September 2010.

  13. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (31 months ago | reply)

    3 October 2010

    Hoover Dam

    Photo by Mike Simpson.

  14. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (30 months ago | reply)

    Very informative article in today's Arizona Daily Star:

    In January, CAP officials said that it's unlikely that urban users will face shortages until the mid-2020s at the earliest. But now, they and Bureau of Reclamation officials say in the worst-case drought scenario, municipal shortages could come as soon as six or seven years, if authorities take no steps to obtain more or use less water and the dry weather continues. [snip]

    If the lake keeps dropping at 11 feet a year as it has in recent years, 1,025 could arrive in as few as six years.

    Read more, Arizona Daily Star, 17 November 2010.

    Pics from the article:


    East end of Lake Mead, 1985.


    October 2010.

  15. ★

    intownlive added this photo to his favorites. (27 months ago)

  16. 666isMONEY ☮ ♥ & ☠ (24 months ago | reply)

    UPDATE (May 2011):

    . . . . The additional water now set for release upstream from Lake Powell is expected to raise the level of Lake Mead by 32 feet by the end of February. . . .

    The extra water for Lake Mead is expected to delay for several years an unprecedented shortage declaration that would require Nevada and Arizona to cut their Colorado River use. . . .

    The surface of Lake Mead now sits at about 1,096 feet above sea level, 115 feet lower than it was in 2000. The reservoir sank to an all-time low in November before rebounding over the past five months.

    Since drought took hold 11 years ago, the overdrawn Colorado has flowed at just 69 percent of its 100-year average.

    This year, forecasters expect it to flow at 145 percent of average.

    Read more: www.lvrj.com/news/lake-mead-s-good-news-equal s-even-highe...

    UPDATE (5 Apr 2012):

    The fact that nine of the last 13 years including this year will have had lower-than-normal river runoff is "a little scary," says Jonathan Overpeck, a top University of Arizona climate scientist. That's because it matches what computer models have predicted due to human-caused climate change, he says.

    A year ago, spring runoff into Lake Powell at the Arizona-Utah border was about 75 percent above normal. More than 12.5 million acre feet of water, enough to serve well over 30 million homes for a year, cascaded downstream from there into Lake Mead at the Arizona-Nevada border.

    Mead hit its lowest level in two generations in October 2010. It rose 50 feet last year to peak at 1,134 feet above sea level early this year. It's expected to fall to about 1,115 feet by September.

    Read more: Arizona Daily Star

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    DabiDesign and Kelsey...! added this photo to their favorites.

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