Lake Mead’s water levels are heading the wrong way and going there alarmingly fast.
If the forecast holds, it’s now likely that we will fall into a more severe Tier 2 shortage by 2023, spreading painful cuts to even more water users in Arizona.
That nugget of bad news comes from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month study, which is updated each month to predict reservoir conditions for the next two years. In April, the projection was that Lake Mead – the reservoir that provides nearly 40% of Arizona’s water – would most certainly be in a Tier 1 shortage in 2022 but would miss the Tier 2 cutoff for 2023 by three-tenths of a foot.
Now, in May, the most likely projection is that Lake Mead will end 2022 at 1,048.83 feet of elevation – more than a foot past the trigger to put us in Tier 2.
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