Hoover Dam At Risk of Shutting Down

Hoover Dam Brings Electricity to 1.3 Million—It's At Risk of Shutting Down

Anna Skinner

What experts are calling an "on-again, off-again" drought for the past two decades is depleting the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs. If the situation continues, the millions of Americans receiving water and electricity from the Hoover Dam could be effected.

The Colorado River feeds two reservoirs––Lake Mead and Lake Powell––which supply the water that powers the Hoover Dam'scapability to create electricity for 1.3 million people. The Hoover Dam also provides water to 25 million people, but if water falls another 150 feet, the reservoirs won't be full enough to power the Hoover Dam.

In the 1990s, reservoir levels were at 100 percent, according to Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University. Now, levels hover around 30 percent. It takes years to restore the levels in the expansive reservoirs, and Seager doubts the levels will ever return to what they were in the 1990s.

Water levels are currently 100 feet above what it takes to pass through the dam properly. If they drop 150 feet, levels will reach what's known as a dead pool and no longer pass through the dam at all, according to an article by KARE 11.

"The levels are getting low enough where if they get much lower, they will have trouble operating the dam in the normal ways," University of California professor Jay Lund told Newsweek.

The potential fallout if that happens could be catastrophic, as the Hoover Dam uses hydroelectric energy––a cheaper, cleaner form of energy––to power 1.3 million homes in Nevada, Arizona and California. The dam also provides irrigation water and controls Colorado River flooding, according to Geoengineer.org, an informational website for geotechnical engineers.

Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center Economist Lucas Bair said if water falls below a certain level, the reservoirs won't be able to power the hydropower generating units that produce the hydroelectric power.

"The lower the lake level gets, the less energy you can produce from a unit of water," Bair told Newsweek. "If the lake falls below what people are calling a power pool, they will not produce any energy."