The bathtub rings around Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area are getting wider and wider, and that's a problem for boaters. NRA officials on Thursday shut down the west half of the Antelope Point launch ramp due to low water levels.
Barricades and cones were placed on the ramp indicating the closed area, the NRA announced. Boaters can continue to launch vessels on the east side of the ramp, but they should still be aware that while the east side of the ramp is open, launching at these water levels is not safe for all sizes of boats.
"Launching is at your own risk," said Cynthia Sequannam, the NRA's information officer. "Should the lake level drop five more feet to an approximate lake elevation of 3,588 feet above sea level, Antelope Point Launch Ramp will close to all launching with boat trailers."
According to the Glen Canyon Institute, as of Wednesday both Lake Powell and Lake Mead down river at Lake Mead National Recreation Area were under half-full, at 46 percent and 42 percent of capacity, respectively. Upper Colorado Basin snow pack, meanwhile, was at 79 percent of the February 18 average.
Comments
I've never seen market forces limit development.. EVER. The housing bust is complete proof of that, as hundreds of thousands of "second homes" that were seen as "cant lose investments" all the suddent flooded the market, because the bubble forced everyone to overspeculate and overbuild. The market is still over correcting from that era from almost a decade ago.
Look at what is happening in the Grand Canyon as another case in point. The developers are trying to railroad through a "small city" on the canyon rim without any forsight in what will happen with water resources. The NPS already stated they are opposed to it, because of the water issues.
That IS market forces. You've never seen it because you apparently don't know what the term means.
And like I stated EC.. I stated the market is overcorrecting. I understand how it works. But, in a sane market, you would never get to the point where it's high boom and high crash. But that's how it works in the good ol' USA.
Much better a periodic boom and crash than the disfunction of government control. (which was the cause of the boom and bust you just lamented).
Yeah, I already know that youre a card carrying member of "Somalia does no wrong" crowd.
Wish I had a clue what you were talking about.... nah, not really.
I wish you had a clue.. But hey...troll on.
J.Thomas, the problems here go far, far back into the history of water wars in the West. To my way of thinking, there needs to be a completely new look at water allocation not just involving the Colorado River's water, but virtually every stream in the West. Part of that examination would need to be a good attempt to establish realistic carrying capacities for available water supplies -- both surface and groundwater. Any realistic estimate of carrying capaciites would need to be extremely conservative and based entirely upon minimum estimates of water availability.
As it is, current water compacts were based upon the myth that if enough dams were built upon enough rivers, there would always be enough water. Those compacts completely failed to consider the possibility that population growth in the Southwest would be as explosive as it has proven to be. They also ignored the certainty that at some future times, we would face extended periods of drought just as had happened in the past.
Those water compacts are very old in most cases and were based upon very poor projections that were rooted in hopeful ignorance. Many date back to times when some people still believed that water would follow the plow. In some cases that mythology was simply replaced by a new myth that water would somehow follow increased agriculture and populations in Southwestern cities. But I don't think anyone back then could possibly have imagined such sleepy places as Phoenix and Las Vegas exploding into the megatroplises they have become.
Taking a new look at water, however, will be nearly impossible. Because most rivers cross several state lines, it's only logical that any attempts to reexamine water compacts would need to be under direction of the Federal government. Given the mess our lawmakers have succeeded in making out of the Federal government, (and most state governments, too) it would make more sense to hire a bunch of Zunis to do a rain dance.
Taking a new look at water would have to be completely apolitical. The chances of that actually happening are even more remote than hoping that powerful interests that stand to profit from exploiting water would have personal visits from God herself. Hoping that another mythical thing called unregulated market forces will somehow solve a problem it created itself is simply stupid.
Perhaps the only other hope out there is that effects of water mismanagement by our current hodgepodge of profit motivated greed and its political purchases might be somehow overturned. But that can happen only if the water crisis becomes so terrible that it begins to affect ordinary people and they face unimaginably terrible consequences. Then, just maybe, they might wake up and demand responsible management from government. By then, though, it will probably be far too late for anything that could work.
I can't help seeing the Old Ones, the Anasazi, in all this. Do you suppose they argued about their futures as they were leaving Chaco and Mesa Verde and other places they had called home because they had slowly destroyed their own environments?
They didn't change their ways until it was too late. Are we following the same path?