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TexasTowelie

(111,313 posts)
Wed May 9, 2018, 09:35 PM May 2018

Federal forecast: Water shortage risks growing for the CAP

Longer-range outlooks for Lake Mead and the CAP are increasingly grim due to this year's bad runoff, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Wednesday.

The result is that the bureau is pushing hard for states in both the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River to reach agreement this year on drought planning to ease the pain of future shortages, after negotiations have so far failed.

The bureau's new forecast for the river shows that the chance of a Central Arizona Project shortage next year is almost nil, but in 2020, it's over 50 percent. Looking farther ahead, the chances of shortage for 2021 through 2023 exceed 60 percent each year, the bureau said. The CAP provides drinking water to Tucson and Phoenix.

The gloomy forecasts are based on this year's expected poor spring-summer runoff into Lake Powell at the Utah border from the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. The most recent forecast, last week, was 42 percent of average runoff.

Read more: http://tucson.com/news/local/federal-forecast-water-shortage-risks-growing-for-the-cap/article_a6880ebc-16a5-5468-944f-f2bd167de8e2.html

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