If Water Year 2027 (Ending 9/30/2027) Matches WY 2025, Hoover & Glen Canyon Would Both Hit Minimum Power Pool

EDIT

If water year 2027, measured from the beginning of October 2026 to the end of the following September, is similar to water year 2025, one of the five driest since 2000, and human consumption is on par with the lowest levels this century, the U.S. would overconsume the natural flow of the river by 2.59 million acre feet (one acre foot of water can serve between 1 and 3 households depending on the climate). Such a drain would “risk a crash of the Basin’s water storage system,” the authors found.

Lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the U.S., would hover just above the minimum elevations required for their dams to produce electricity and maintain their structural integrity. Hoover and Glen Canyon dams would be close to operating as “run-of-the-river” facilities that store no surplus. Another dry winter would hit farmers across the region particularly hard, said Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado Law School, a former assistant secretary for Water and Science at the Interior Department and one of the report’s authors. “It could put a lot of market pressure on agricultural water users” to sell their water to cities, she continued, which would “have a significant effect on agricultural production and rural communities.” “It’s just so hard to make those kinds of deep cuts,” Castle said. “When you translate that into who exactly is going to get less water, it gets even harder.”

EDIT

Reclamation did not respond to a request for comment about how it factors aridity into its 24-month projections. The agency also makes other 2-year and 5-year projections for the river using its Mid-Term Operations Model, which Kuhn said encompasses the continued drought of the last half-decade. “Reclamation is on their toes when it comes to improving these forecasts,” Kuhn said.

No matter what the next water year brings, Colorado River reservoirs will likely continue ratcheting downward as long as supply and demand remain imbalanced. “Every time we go through a wet period, we don’t recover enough and we haven’t reduced basic uses enough,” Kuhn said. “The next dry cycle is worse.” “This is not a temporary situation,” he continued. “The long-term solution is a permanent reduction in the consumptive use footprint throughout the basin.”

END

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02062026/colorado-river-reservoir-water-shortage-after-winter-drought/