February 17, 2008--Wet winter helps battle drought (Glenwood Springs Post Independent)
If the weather doesn’t dry up or become unseasonably warm, the hefty snowpack around most of Colorado will bring larger-than-normal amounts of runoff down from the mountains. That comes as a boon to farmers and ranchers, with irrigation being the major water use in the West. The Blue Mesa Reservoir west of Gunnison — Colorado’s largest body of water — indicates how the state’s doing in terms of water levels. It was full in 1999 and then again in 2006, but didn’t make it to the brim last year. However, it will make it again this year, said Dan Crabtree, a water resources group chief for the federal Bureau of Reclamation. “If all our reservoirs are full and we are diverting all that we have a right to or that we can use, the excess goes downstream and it ends up in Lake Powell,” Crabtree said. Powell acts as a storage vessel for the Upper Colorado River Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. In 1999, its waters reached only 3,555 feet above sea level out of a 3,700-foot capacity. Currently, Crabtree said, Powell is still more than 100 feet low, at 3,590 feet above sea level. But that could change. The Bureau of Reclamation predicts that snowpack runoff coming down the mountains and into the Colorado River will help recharge Lake Powell by nearly 5 million acre-feet of water, raising the reservoir’s height by about 34 feet. Crabtree said a bureau report predicts that 13.08 million acre-feet of water will flow into Lake Powell between Oct. 1, 2007, and the end of September, while a year before, the inflow to Lake Powell during the same period was 8.08 million acre-feet. Powell must release 8.23 million acre-feet downstream during the same period.
To view the full article, visit the Glenwood Springs Post Independent. For a copy of the original article contact the WIP at (970) 247-1302 or stop by the office at 841 East Second Avenue in Durango.