Quote:
Originally Posted by Inner Dirt
It does appear they can easily manipulate the water levels...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Inner Dirt
The population of California has DOUBLED in the last 50 years...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Inner Dirt
Here is another news flash, more people = more need for water.
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I singled out three sentences from your quote.
I would add:
Glenn Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 to form Lake Powell on the Colorado River.
The population of Arizona has exploded since then.
As more and more people piled into the greater Phoenix area it became obvious there would eventually be so many people that there literally wouldn't be enough water to support them all.
So they built the
Central Arizona Project - a canal system that pumps a serious amount of water (456 billion gallons per year) from the Colorado River into central Arizona.
Quote:
The 456 billion gallons (1.4 million acre feet) of water is lifted by up to 2,900 feet by 14 pumps using 2.5 million MWh of electricity each year, making CAP the largest power user in Arizona. Lake Pleasant is used as a buffer.[3][4]
The canal loses approximately 16,000 acre-feet (5.2 billion gallons) of water each year to evaporation, a figure that will only increase as temperatures rise. It loses 9,000 acre-feet (2.9 billion gallons) annually from water seeping or leaking through the concrete.[5]
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Problem solved. Or so the municipal planners thought back in the 1990's when Central Arizona Project water being pumped through the canals first reached the greater Phoenix area.
Once upon a time the Colorado River upon which both Lake Mead and Lake Powell sit was seen as an endless source of water and low cost hydroelectric power.
But since the 1990's, so much of the Colorado River's water is diverted away to both California and Arizona that the river itself now only rarely reaches the Sea of Cortez.
My point?
There's a reason hydroelectric power production is down and the lake levels are low.
Too much of the water in the Colorado River is spoken for.
-jp
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