The Bureau of Reclamation issued a press release on Tuesday outlining further details of the actions being taken in response to the drought and dangerous water levels at Lake Powell. As most have heard, the plan relies on water releases from from Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream. The additional action announced Tuesday is that the Bureau of Reclamation is invoking its authority to, for the first time, change the annual operations of Glen Canyon Dam. The annual release volume at Glen Canyon Dam will be reduced in order to leave approximately 480 thousand acre-feet of water in Lake Powell. Combined with the 500 thousand acre-feet of water coming from Flaming Gorge, Lake Powell is expected to increase by approximately 16 feet or by nearly 1 million acre feet of water over the next year. It is expected that the releases from Flaming Gorge will result in a drop in the reservoir’s water surface elevation by approximately 9 feet and could affect some of the reservoir’s recreational amenities.
