The reservoir system in the USA provided three things; water to drink, electricity for power and lakes for recreation. In order to turn the downward spiral at Lake Powell it will most likely mean giving up any recreational areas.
There is an alternative to allowing the drought to deteriorate the water supply to the dam. It will also mean conservation in the area will change depending on how the wildlife adapts.
It may be possible to capture the water from the Colorado River at the entrance to the lake and create manmade channels directly to the turbines. In other words, every turbine will have it’s own small river running to it.
Basically, what that means is taking all the water currently in Lake Powell and condensing it into a far narrower channel that will deliver water to the turbines for a longer period of time simply because an entire lake doesn’t have to be filled in order to run the turbines.
It is a massive task and it isn’t an easy fix, but, if the water is coming close to deadpool there are few options. I don’t know of any engineering firm that would want a high risk project like this except the government, Army Corp. They have decades if not a century of experience that no one else can match.
Good luck.
White concrete please. Conservationists need to be included as shareholders to estimate the impact of the change and decide how to protect species from extinction even if it means relocating them. We aren’t going to be in a climate crisis forever so long as the GHGs are reducing to livable levels.
