[Keith_McClary]

Hoover Dam could stop generating electricity as soon as 2013
By ERIC WOLFF , September 11, 2010

After 75 years of steadily cranking out electricity for California, Arizona and Nevada, the mighty turbines of the Hoover Dam could cease turning as soon as 2013, if water levels in the lake that feeds the dam don't start to recover
...
"The drought can't last forever," DiDonato said. "Eventually, the lake is going to fill up again. You have to hope it does."
Actually, the drought may not be a short-term emergency so much as a feature of a new, drier American West.

[Tanada]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

[Oakley]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

Yea, lets start starving a bunch of people right now and avoid the last minute rush that will come when there is not enough oil to run farm equipment.

[vtsnowedin]

If you look at the Lake Meade web site you can see that the lake is actually twenty feet above its historical average for Sept.20. It is the end of the water year and the growing season. Also there are 24 million acre feet of water upstream at lake Powell.

http://lakemead.water-data.com/

[Tanada]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

Yea, lets start starving a bunch of people right now and avoid the last minute rush that will come when there is not enough oil to run farm equipment.

Starve my behind, look out the window and tell me how many of the people you see look like they are eating lots of produce, which is the main type of food crop in the southwest desert? Then ask yourself why Cotton, a very high water demand crop, is the next biggest water consumer in the desert?

We can easily feed ourselves without irrigating the flippin desert, but the government has made irrigation water from the Colorado river so insanely under priced that grow high value crops there instead of elsewhere. In much of the area east of the Mississippi former crop land has been reverting to wood lot because mega farm agribusiness using cheap fed subsidized water brought prices so low that eastern farms could not compete. It is what always happens when top down bureaucracy picks a mega winner and subsidizes them over everyone else, desert farming exploded in the 1940's and 1950's and because their water expenses have not risen. As environmental costs to the Colorado watershed went up they have a strong economic advantage despite the damage done elsewhere as a result. Make them pay what the water is worth and stop subsidizing idiotic crop choices. Grow crops that have a low water demand if you must grow in the desert, not high demand like Cotton and Produce.

Name me one other country that dedicates so much water and energy to irrigating desert to grow these kinds of crops?

[Newfie]

Hum, I don't what you are looking at but.........that web site showed me a decline, backed up by a quick Google search that indicated a 54 year drought.

Perhaps you linked the wrong site or miss read the tables????

:razz: If you look at the Lake Meade web site you can see that the lake is actually twenty feet above its historical average for Sept.20. It is the end of the water year and the growing season. Also there are 24 million acre feet of water upstream at lake Powell.

http://lakemead.water-data.com/

[vtsnowedin]

Hum, I don't what you are looking at but.........that web site showed me a decline, backed up by a quick Google search that indicated a 54 year drought.

Perhaps you linked the wrong site or miss read the tables????

:razz: If you look at the Lake Meade web site you can see that the lake is actually twenty feet above its historical average for Sept.20. It is the end of the water year and the growing season. Also there are 24 million acre feet of water upstream at lake Powell.

http://lakemead.water-data.com/

Assuming you can read.....
Open the page then scroll down to the tables showing recent measurements and historic averages.
Present water level = 1185 ft above sea level
Sept. 20th average sence filled 1164 ft.

[eastbay]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

... and another far more serious problem (hunger) made even worse.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

... and another far more serious problem (hunger) made even worse.

Why not to draw irrigation water from below the dam?

[hillsidedigger]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

... and another far more serious problem (hunger) made even worse.

Why not to draw irrigation water from below the dam?

Often the Colorado River is dry well before it reaches it's mouth. Irrigating the desert for produce, cotton or lawns is moronic.

[steam_cannon]

Why not to draw irrigation water from below the dam?

Because you have to use a lot of energy to pump water back up the hill to where the farm fields are. And I think the farm fields must be at a higher elevation then the dam because otherwise they would already be taking water from below the level of the dam as you suggested.

[pup55]

but the government has made irrigation water from the Colorado river so insanely under priced that grow high value crops there instead of elsewhere

I almost forgot about this during our rant about government encroachment the other day.... I wonder how many tea partiers there are out in the Inland Empire that are dependent 100% on this government project.....

I think it used to be that cotton came from places where it grew reasonably well without massive irrigation, such as "the Land of Cotton" where old times there are not forgotten, and someplace around "the Cotton Bowl"....

[TWilliam]

Assuming you can read.....
Open the page then scroll down to the tables showing recent measurements and historic averages.
Present water level = 1185 ft above sea level
Sept. 20th average sence filled 1164 ft.

Apparently YOU can't read ( or you need your glasses checked), because the present water level is at 1,085 ft., not 1,185 ft., which is LOWER than 1,164 ft.

[Arthur75]

Hey Tanada, I think I'm falling in love with your avatar, but as it is obviously not you, it feels a bit "uneasy", would you mind changing it ?

[Pops]

I don't think there isn't any irrigation water taken from the Hoover dam, it's in a canyon and you'd be able to see canals below the dam. Maybe water for Vegas is pumped out?

The Imperial dam downriver is where the irrigation for the Imperial, Coachella and Yuma valleys is diverted. I think there is another dam downriver for Riverside.

But as for cotton, CA subsidizes 2 "family farms" in the southern end of the central valley, one, the Boswells are the largest cotton farmers in the world and get millions in subsidies from the government to grow cotton on water moved from lake shasta at the northern end of the state - provided by the good people of CA.

[vtsnowedin]

Assuming you can read.....
Open the page then scroll down to the tables showing recent measurements and historic averages.
Present water level = 1185 ft above sea level
Sept. 20th average sence filled 1164 ft.

Apparently YOU can't read ( or you need your glasses checked), because the present water level is at 1,085 ft., not 1,185 ft., which is LOWER than 1,164 ft.

You are quite right . I stand corrected.

[Ludi]

But as for cotton, CA subsidizes 2 "family farms" in the southern end of the central valley, one, the Boswells are the largest cotton farmers in the world and get millions in subsidies from the government to grow cotton on water moved from lake shasta at the northern end of the state - provided by the good people of CA.

Those kind of guvmint subsidies are ok, apparently.

[Pops]

Those kind of guvmint subsidies are ok, apparently.

Appaerently.

[Tanada]

Those kind of guvmint subsidies are ok, apparently.

Appaerently.

I happen to find these kind of subsidies abhorrent, not only because of the environmental damage they do but because of the cultural damage they have done over the generations. 99% of Americans and a high percentage of Californian's are not even aware these subsidies are in existence. Farm subsidies on all levels take place in the background out of sight, out of mind. If I had not grown up on a small farm surrounded by small farmers I wouldn't be aware of them myself, but one thing I know for certain the smaller the farm the less likely they are to be helped by these subsidies rather than damaged.

One example is the water waste pointed too above, another is the sheer fact that subsidies for mega-farms strongly encourage mono-cropping, which promotes disease spread and destroys ecological diversity while encouraging poor grain based diets. Most farms around here do a two or three year rotation of Corn/Soybeans/Potato's or Corn/Soybeans because it is so much better for the soil, but hey none of these are mega-farms either. The endless acre's of wheat or corn grown in the plains states are a whole different kind of farm theory that depletes the soil and is using up the Ogalala at a huge rate of consumption.

[Expatriot]

Anyone have any common sense left? Stop irrigating a hundred thousand acre's of desert, and start using the dam to produce power during peak loads instead of as a base load supply source. Problem solved.

I respectfully offer that this is not problem solved. It is simply problem deferred, put off - can kicked a bit, and so on.

The problem is what Montequest always writes - too many people. All the "conservation" is simply a way to defer paying the Piper.

But we will pay the Piper.