Global Rundown
- Water levels in Lake Powell, on the Colorado River, are projected to be 34 feet lower at the beginning of next year compared to 2025, increasing the risk of a hydropower shutdown.
- A major San Antonio-area aquifer has fallen significantly below its average levels, forcing water-use restrictions for the Texas metro area’s utilities.
- Pakistan’s abnormally strong monsoon season has continued with devastating weekend floods and landslides, killing more than 300 people.
- The construction of a new hydropower dam in North Sumatra, Indonesia, threatens to push the world’s rarest great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan, to extinction.
The Lead
The water level at Lake Powell — a massive, 24.3 million acre-foot reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border — has fallen to its lowest point in three years, USA Today reports.
According to the Bureau of Reclamation’s newest 24-month study, released last Friday, the reservoir is expected to begin next year 34 feet lower than it was at the start of 2025. These levels are still high enough for the agency to release 7.48 million acre-feet of water from Glen Canyon Dam, a flow which will cause Lake Mead, a bigger reservoir downstream, to shrink yet again next year.
By the end of 2026, officials are wary of a scenario in which water levels at the dam are too low to generate hydropower. Longer-term supplies of electricity and water are less certain, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
In Context: Dry Colorado River Forecast Gets Drier
What Happens If Glen Canyon Dam’s Power Shuts Off?
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- As Flames Scorch Western Forests, Flagstaff Area Offers Roadmap for Post-Wildfire Flood Prevention — Floods and landslides are post-wildfire hazards spreading a slow disaster across the American West.
- Chicago’s “Quantum Prairie” Promises New Era of Great Lakes Technology and Water Use — Big technology development aims for zero water waste.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
29
The water level in central Texas’s Edwards Aquifer — which provides drinking water for 2 million people — is 29 feet lower than its average for this time of year, the Texas Standard reports. As a result, officials have implemented water-use restrictions of up to 40 percent, impacting utilities including the San Antonio Water System. The aquifer didn’t benefit from the concentrated deluge that fell on the region during the Fourth of July weekend, and even lakes that were replenished have had their water levels fall following the sudden event, which was an anomaly amidst a summer-long dry spell. Much of Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, remains in severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
300
As of Monday morning, at least 300 people have died in Pakistan and Kashmir — with some outlets reporting a higher death toll — after a weekend of heavy monsoon rains gave rise to flash floods and landslides in the region’s mountainous stretches, BBC reports. At least 74 homes were damaged and 10 to 12 villages were partially buried in debris, while a rescue helicopter crashed during its normal operations. The weekend deluge is the latest event in a summer plagued by extreme weather. According to BBC, “in July, Punjab, home to nearly half of Pakistan’s 255 million people, recorded 73 percent more rainfall than the prior year and more deaths than in the entire previous monsoon season.” Scientists have recently suggested this summer’s monsoon season has been made 15 percent more intense by climate change.
In context: The Season of Our Growing Discontent
On the Radar
In North Sumatra, the Bank of China is financing the construction of the Batang Toru dam, a hydropower project in Indonesia that environmentalists have been opposing for years, Inside Climate News reports. At the center of the controversy is the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, of whom fewer than 800 individuals remain. Scientists warn that the dam could drive the great apes to extinction, isolating population subgroups within their habitat, “a swath of mountainous forest the size of Los Angeles.” The project will also divert part of the Batang Toru River into a 222-acre reservoir that connects via tunnel to a downstream generating station.
Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region
Drought, then Downpours in Ohio: Last year was Ohio’s most intense drought in 25 years, with 88 percent of the state officially experiencing drought conditions and 35 percent reaching Stage Four — the highest alert issued by the U.S. Drought Monitor — by September. The dry spell was devastating to many farmers, wiping out thousands of dollars of crops for some, Inside Climate News reports. This year has been an entirely different story, with the same result. Erratic and heavy downpours, sometimes greater than 4 inches of rain falling in a single hour, have turned farmland to mud. “I was so happy just to feel the rain that I wasn’t really processing that it was impacting yields. … I was a little too chill about it,” Lindsey Klaunig, a farmer in Athens, Ohio, told the outlet. “I’m really not gonna make much money this year. It’s probably going to be about like last year.”
Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.
- Trump admin cancels $156M Michigan solar program as coal plant decision looms —Bridge Michigan
- New study correlates unexplained frequent miscarriages to PFAS exposure — Great Lakes Now
- EPA investigates Detroit drinking water expert’s petition signature: Are scientists being silenced? — Michigan Public
- Salmon habitat is destroyed for development. Is it possible to replace what’s lost? — The Narwhal
