The Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border is known for its kokanee salmon and trophy lake trout. But when the water started dropping rapidly a few weeks ago, business at Buckboard Marina started drying up, too.
“It was just like, ‘boom!’,” said marina owner Tony Valdez, who has seen the water level fall about 7 feet since April. “It was dropping a foot a day. I couldn’t keep up.”
Valdez charters fishing tours from his marina. A third of his customers canceled after the lake started falling, he said.
The Flaming Gorge provides a backstop for larger reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin. Lake Powell, a few hundred miles downstream, is less than a quarter full. The federal Bureau of Reclamation warned in April that hydropower production could stop at Powell in August if the water levels continued to drop.
To prevent a significant blow to the region’s power supply, the bureau announced it would send up to 1-million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge over the course of a year to prop up levels at Lake Powell.
“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” said the Bureau of Reclamation’s Andrea Travnicek.
The decision to prop up Lake Powell has come at a cost for Valdez and his marina in Wyoming. The ramp to the marina’s dock has dropped at a sharp angle toward the shore. It’s a steep walk to the water. And it’s going to get worse. The Bureau of Reclamation said water levels at the Flaming Gorge will fall a total of 35 feet by next April.
Valdez is building new walkways and even considering moving the entire marina closer to the shore, at an “astronomical” price. None of this will solve the bigger problem. Decades of drought and overuse have pushed the river and its two largest reservoirs to the brink of collapse. There’s not enough water in the Colorado River and its tributaries to meet unrelenting demand.
“You could drain all the lakes and never achieve it,” Valdez said.
Even with borrowed water from the Flaming Gorge, the reprieve for Lake Powell is temporary. Later this summer, the federal government is expected to release a plan that will likely mean deep cuts to the water supply for states that rely on the Colorado River.
“You will never feed the thirst,” Valdez said. “You can’t.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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