June 5, 2008--Report: Lake Pueblo runs clean (The Pueblo West View)
At the time Pueblo Dam was completed, experts expected the reservoir behind it to begin collecting sediment - a lot of it - as it drained an area of more than 4,500 square miles upstream. The initial prediction, based on a 29-year record at John Martin Reservoir at the time, was that 100,000 acre-feet of sediment would collect in Lake Pueblo over the next century. That would have diminished the storage capacity by one-third. That rate could be a problem, representing significantly diminished storage space in an era when the dam’s operator, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, is looking at more and more 40-year contracts. However, a follow-up study in the 1990s found the real rate of sedimentation at Lake Pueblo is far less, about 41 percent of the expected loss of space.
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