In paragraph 5, this May 3rd story corrected the conversion of an acre-foot into 1.23 million liters.

Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – U.S. officials announced Tuesday unprecedented steps to increase water levels at Lake Powell. This artificial reservoir is located on the Colorado River and was created to protect the hydroelectric power production for seven Western States.

The Bureau of Reclamation is releasing an additional 500,000 acres (616.7 millions cubic meters) of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, upstream at the Wyoming-Utah border. This will allow for a prolonged drought that has been exacerbated due to climate change. It will then flow into Lake Powell.

Officials said that another 480,000 acres of land, which would otherwise have been released downstream, will now be kept in the artificial lake at the Utah-Arizona boundary.

Tanya Trujillo (Interior Department assistant secretary for water science) stated to reporters that “we have not taken this step in the Colorado River Basin before, but the circumstances we see today, and the possible risk on the horizon require us to take immediate action.”

A single acre of land, or 326,000 gallons (or 1.23 million liters), provides enough water for one to two households over the course of a year.

According to the bureau, the additional 980,000 acres-feet of Lake Powell will keep Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric power online. This is due to the reservoir being raised by 16 feet (4.88m) when the Colorado River was created in Arizona.

Lake Powell would drop 32 more feet to make it the 2nd largest U.S. reservoir. The 1,320 megawatt plant that generates electricity in Wyoming, Utah Colorado New Mexico Arizona Nevada Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, and Nevada, could not produce enough power to supply millions of homes in Wyoming, Utah Colorado New Mexico Arizona Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, Nevada, Arizona and Nevada.

In the past 20 years, the west United States saw the dryest period in recorded history. Experts say that the use of drought to describe conditions is insufficient as it implies normalcy.

According to Denielle Perry of Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability: “We will not see these reservoirs fill again in this lifetime.”

These new measures will increase pressure on Lake Mead which, at its largest, is the nation’s biggest reservoir. It also falls below Lake Powell, and it has fallen to a new low. Lake Mead is a reservoir that was created by Hoover Dam in 1933 and which supplies water to over 25 million people. Its level has dropped so much that on Sunday, an abandoned barrel filled with human remains, thought to be from the 1980s, could have been found along the coast.