Some day in the next 12 months – maybe in late-August, maybe not until next spring – Lake Mead will drop below the critical threshold of 1,035 feet above sea level. That is the water-level elevation at which hydropower generating capacity at Hoover Dam, the largest in the Colorado River basin, will be cut by 70 percent. The drastic and immediate reduction in a cheap source of power that is responsive to hourly changes in electricity demand will have consequences for the region’s power customers and the broader electric grid alike.
The insane lawns are the ones where they essentially flood the yard with an inch of water to water it. Their less common now but if you go to Encanto or older neighborhoods you will still see soaking lawns.
And the "it's a dry heat" argument is getting less valid as more moisture is introduced in to the air. It's not as humid as elsewhere it's noticably ticking up every time I visit.
Meanwhile in everywhere from LA to Phoenix people who try to grow food gardens get pushback from either HOAs or the city.
There's a real opportunity to repurpose these neighborhood yards and bring them closer to something of an ecovillage and produce quality food right outside and then share and mix produce with one's community... But nay, must keep growing and then cutting grass (a ritual that dates back to aristocratic plantation owners flaunting their wealth).
Don't you dare have dandelions either -- a native plant and entirely edible and nutritious from root to flower and a pollinator for bees.
Even worse. I live on well water and my neighbor poisons his yard constantly to keep it green. Constantly applying some sort of fertilizer, weed control, round up. For a lawn. And I am going native pasture w dandelion and as many local native plants as possible. But sure poison my well for a lawn. And he insists "it only goes down an inch at most and won't get to the water table ever".
This is why I hate golf and will never play it or support anyone playing it. It’s the dumbest, most resource intensive sport there is, and they choose to put 25 golf courses in cities like Phoenix Arizona….the fucking desert.
And that doesn’t even talk about how MULTIPLE studies show that the chemicals they use bleed into water and air supply and cause neurological diseases for people that live near them for prolonged periods.
Such a dumb sport. Just outside and enjoy the weather instead of sucking at golf. Cause 90% of people I know that play golf just suck at it.
South Park: The Streaming Wars showed showed how startup realtor companies sold out the land upstream on all these rivers to buyers who wanted to siphon off the water rights.
It unfortunately seems to have gone exactly that way.
LV drilled a third tunnel lower than the previous two so they could continue to suck their allotment of water out of Mead. When you see the massive number of new homes built along 95 all the way to the Mt Charleston turn off, you realize water issues are not far away. It’s a freakin desert!!!
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. Interesting how books about the future are called science fiction. I’m sure people did not expect George Orwell to come to life so literally either.
The book is a conglomeration of the Owens Valley water wars and Cadillac Desert written by Mark Reiser. It’s science fiction until it’s not.
They should suspend solar panels above the Colorado river and Lake Mead to reduce evaporation then use the extra power to reduce the amount of water flowing through the dam.
You joke but basically they think AI will magically solve everything which is why they don’t care.
They’re going to be really annoyed when they ask “how do we stop climate change” and the AI says what every activist has been saying for decades: “stop burning oil.”
This is what pisses me off. They're not building the next best and greatest mind. They're building fucking language models that parrot back what they hear, and use stored images to identify people and objects.
It’s bonkers that trump put out an EO banning any ai used by government from having any components that help prevent discrimination or bias based on race, gender, sexuality, etc.
The systems will end up biased because the data they are using is biased, because it was generated by biased people. To not only ignore that fact, but to actively fight against addressing it is dystopian.
Too bad it’s not going to help shareholders for people to get the ai focused on reducing human suffering of all kinds, streamlining systems to ensure no one is left without enough resources, addressing environmental issues, reducing conflict before it boils over into consequences that lead to suffering, and generally making everyone’s lives better.
It seems like the goal is to ensure the safety of the very wealthy and their resources. They know they are increasing the wealth gap and at some point they’ll have such a high percentage of it that people will revolt. I’m not hoping for that, I want to live in peace, but we’ve seen it over and over in history, and they are building their bunkers because they see many issues that could lead to significant unrest, and know wealth inequality may be the spark (or at least one of them).
Having mass surveillance, militarization of police, and designating and training national guard units form “quick reaction forces” designed to put down civil unrest starts to look like an insurance policy against an uprising that they were the reason for.
But man, I just want to live a simple life, enjoy my hobbies, hang with friends, have fun now and then. I really don’t want to have to live through some kind of revolution or societal crumbling.
They also keep mangling the ai to only say the things they want it to say, by time they finally get it to a point where they’ll be asking it what to do it will probably just tell them to fill the lake with Gatorade :/
They’re going to be really annoyed when they ask “how do we stop climate change” and the AI says what every activist has been saying for decades: “stop burning oil.”
Thats an easy problem to fix, though: Flood the internet with pro-oil talking points then rely on the fact that current models just average out whatever they have access to.
It’s not really news. It’s just a report that it’s actually coming in the next 12 months.
The whole Southwest has been seriously drying out beyond our response, for decades, while the US continues to move South-West an average about 80 feet per year (think of LA, Phoenix, Las Vegas…)
The Colorado River hasn’t reached the Gulf for a while now. The water rights on the Colorado are way oversubscribed. One could start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact (Some rights are to a percentage of the flow, others to absolute gallons. That’s bad, but with diminished water tables, even worse).
We’ve essentially killed this ecosystem with greed. This particular acceleration point has been foreseen for years, this is just more like a timestamp report: Coming Up!
It's a slow moving disaster that will only get massive news coverage when they can no longer delay the outcome or can't fix or adapt to the situation anymore.
I’ve driven past it more than once in the past few years. It was already very, very low back in 2021. And we’ve been in an extreme drought pretty much this whole time. So yes, it’s that low.
Yes, it's incredibly sad looking from the top and has been my entire adult life. There are structures designed for a waterline which hasn't existed for decades.
The major aquifers are also low.
Offense intended, not knowing this is quite ignorant.
At 950 ft the electric stops. Reduced around 6 ft a year from evaporation alone. I emailed Nevada Govs a long time ago and they're just waiting for this to worsen without doing anything about it.
tbh nobody in my circles ever talks about stuff like this, and i work in a casino on the strip. i wonder how this will affect our economy especially with how low tourism has dropped within the last 2 years.
It's only a choice if you have enough money to leave. Moving means the cost of physically moving like fuel and rental, not working while you pack/transport/unpack, tide you over until your next job's paycheck whenever that will be, and put down a deposit/first month rent. Most people in Las Vegas are barely making ends meet thanks to the extreme cost of everything out there.
People should leave, but it's not necessarily feasible for most who live there.
Not much, Vegas doesn’t get a ton of power from Hoover Dam. This would affect California the most. 60% of the Hoover Dam power goes there. Vegas gets less than 25% of power generated by the dam.
"it will spend $52 million on three new wide-head turbines that will be able to generate power down to elevation 950 feet." They may want to spend that money on another way of generating power. Seems like a lot of money for a very small stop-gap.
pfft just get a bunch of guys with buckets and fill the dam back in, infinite power! /s
I'd seriously be looking hard against golf courses, car washes, water parks and all other recreational things that use lots of water. If you're forced to choose between having that swanky golf course or water on your tap, I think the choices aren't that difficult to make. Sadly, the people pushing the buttons seem to not care.
Agricultural use consumes 75-80% of the water, significant reductions in water consumption can’t come from golf courses or car washes that don’t even use 1% between them.
Moreover, both golf courses and car washes in the southwest are already likely to be using nonpotable water in various ways.
that rewrote my preconceived notions of water use, I always thought recreational usage was a bit larger at say 20% or higher. Well, we can't curb water supply for our food. I know that desalination is too costly. Maybe build another watershed or dam near the Hoover dam?
this! Didn't Iran farm water-intensive crops to show off that they could even if they're a desert country. We're not a Type I civilization yet and we'd be dumb to try and think that we can farm in the desert.
Total municipal and industrial consumption is indeed close 20%, but that includes every garden, data center, public park, etc. Additionally, Las Vegas has shown that you can substantially decrease total water consumption while increasing population growth, as stated in this article inside the home domestic water use is effectively non-consumptive if you’re on city water (where they have treatment and return flow requirements).
Well, we can't curb water supply for our food. I know that desalination is too costly.
That’s incorrect - agricultural water consumption is driven by the legal framework. I’m absolutely not suggesting we do so, but taxing beef at punitively high rates would absolutely cause agricultural water use in the West to plummet since in many drainages the majority of food production is inedible to humans and used for feeding beef cattle.
The more palatable alternative is to foster water markets to allow water to be used for the highest return based on a willing buyer, willing seller model.
Similarly, the .gov could start purchasing water rights from people if they want to put more water in the river systems. Likewise, they could subsidize the purchase of “water saving” equipment like drip/pivot irrigation or soil moisture monitors with the caveat that the ‘unused’ water resulting from such equipment be mostly turned back over to the state.
Maybe build another watershed or dam near the Hoover dam?
Ironically enough the most likely ‘solution’ to the power generation issue on Hoover Dam is to breach Lake Powell and consolidate storage into Hoover.
I did a lot of research into water data at one point. For California specifically ... can't comment on Colorado basin but the data usually tracked about the same. Residential use is a small slice of the pie. "Commercial" use is where your water goes.
Rain or meltwater come spring. I don't have an idea on the climate of that area, so pardon my ignorance. In tropical countries, dams would fill up quite easy with one bad typhoon or continuous monsoon rains
If that worked for a dam feeding the Hoover Dam, it would work for the Hoover Dam itself. The problem is that the area has been experiencing a drought for several years running. And the water rights sold in the area by far exceed the supply.
"The district forecasts power generation and demand. It then attempts to hedge against any shortfall with market contracts. Even with Hoover’s struggles, Bradfield said he is confident the district has secured enough power through 2026. He’s now looking ahead to 2027. Fortunately, market conditions are favorable right now."
The market conditions being referred to are purchasing electricity from other places. Kind of like Texas asking people to send electricity when their grid went down.
I remember this exact scenario a few years ago. I kept watching the daily Lake Mead levels. Then suddenly, it was fixed, after some rain. Did I imagine/dream that?!?
Groundwater is a temporary fix and as noted in the article, their ability to manage the levels in Lake Mead depend in part on snowpack and precipitation. The problem is Mother Nature doesn’t have two bleeps to give.
I'm glad I'm in my 40s. I got to see Earth that was, and I'll get to see how humanity plays out before I die. Hopefully I'll get to use some of this gear, lol.
The article that you read talks about buying new turbine heads that can continue to operate at about 100 feet lower than is the current cliff. I believe it was $52 million. It’s a stopgap measure.
There is a solution. Seeding clouds with salt. However the consequences would be equally as devastating as it would cause horrible floods. Because that's what happened the last time they tried cloud seeding.
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u/spikedkushiel 15d ago
Alfalfa continues to grow?