US drought to deplete Lake Mead to levels not seen since 1930s

The Guardian (UK) via AP: Drought in the south-western US will deplete the vast Lake Mead this week to levels not seen since Hoover Dam was completed and the reservoir on the Colorado River was filled in the 1930s, federal water managers said Tuesday.

The projected lake level of about 1,080 feet above sea level will be below the level of about 1,082 feet recorded in November 2010 and the 1,083-foot mark measured in April 1956 during another sustained drought.

But US Bureau of Reclamation regional chief Terry Fulp said water obligations will be met at least through next year without a key shortage declaration. The result will be full deliveries to cities, states, farms and Indian tribes in an area that's home to some 40 million people and the cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

"We continue to closely monitor the projections of declining lake levels and are working with stakeholders throughout the Lower Basin to keep as much water in Lake Mead as we can through various storage and conservation efforts," Fulp said in a statement.

The lake on Tuesday was just under 1,082 feet above sea level, and the reservoir was about 39% full, said Rose Davis, a bureau spokeswoman in Boulder City, Nevada.

... "We projected this was coming," Davis said. "We are basically where we expected to be, given the dry winters in 2012 and 2013."...

An aerial view of Black Canyon, Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, shot by Doc Searls, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Flood of dead pigs in China reservoir

Terra Daily via AFP: Hundreds of dead pigs are being recovered every month from a Chinese reservoir, partly due to government efforts to stop carcasses making their way onto the dining table, state media said Wednesday. The revelations about the reservoir in Qionglai, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, are the latest scandal relating to food safety to hit China.

The news comes one week after authorities found 157 dead pigs in a river in Jiangxi province. A year ago China was stunned by the appearance of more than 16,000 dead pigs floating along parts of the Huangpu river which flows through the country's commercial hub Shanghai. The dead creatures also started to drift along rivers into the Qionglai irrigation reservoir five years ago, the Western China City Daily reported.

Now an average of 500 carcasses are retrieved from it every month, the report said, citing Xu Bangchun, one of the two workers hired by local water resources authorities to deal with the remains. "I have no time to do other things at home now that my main job every day is to recover dead pigs," said Xu, who also runs a family farm tourism business nearby. There are more than 300,000 pig farmers along the three rivers that feed the reservoir, the paper said....

A riverbank in Jiangxi, shot by Zhangzhugang, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

California drought: Two reservoirs near Hetch Hetchy tapped

Marisa Lagos in the San Francisco Chronicle: The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is in a much better position than most other California water agencies as the state stares down its first full year of drought: Its Hetch Hetchy Reservoir remains 51 percent full, and its customers use far less water than most others.

But if the bone-dry conditions persist, it won't be. So the agency, which serves 2.4 million Bay Area water customers, is making contingency plans to increase its drinking supply by using two existing reservoirs just northwest of its Yosemite crown jewel that the city hasn't tapped for drinking water since 1988.

Lake Eleanor and Cherry Reservoir, which the SFPUC now uses for hydropower and to provide water to several districts downstream, sit high in the Sierra Nevada amid the devastation of last year's huge Rim Fire. To bring those reservoirs into the drinking water system, the agency will need to spend about $10 million to shore up a dam that was damaged in the wildfire and make improvements to an aqueduct that hasn't been used for more than two decades.

Unlike Hetch Hetchy, which can hold 360,000 acre-feet and is so pristine its water needs minimal treatment and no filtration, Lake Eleanor and Cherry Reservoir - also known as Lake Lloyd - will have their water filtered at an existing Sunol Valley treatment plant. The PUC hopes to have the new system online by Oct. 1, well in time for 2015's dry season. Over the coming months, the SFPUC expects Cherry Reservoir to fill to its capacity - 273,000 acre-feet - with snowmelt from the watersheds that feed it. Lake Eleanor, at 27,100 acre-feet, is already filled to the brim....

Lake Eleanor and the Banning Dam in the Santa Monica Mountains (I hope this is the right body of water), shot by Seanydelight, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license