Hoover Dam’s reservoir runs low as America’s hottest states contemplate a chilling scenario
With 65 per cent of the US in drought, the plight of Nevada’s Lake Mead gives a stark glimpse of the future
No visitor can miss the ghostly band of white rock that augurs Lake Mead’s doom. Running all the way around the 759-mile shoreline of one of America’s largest reservoirs, it rises from the waterline to an eerily sharp boundary with deep red canyon walls above.
The so-called “bathtub ring” marks exactly how far Lake Mead has fallen from its previous level – and how far the states and cities which depend on it are from disaster.
“They’re just continuing building in that area,” said Kyle Wittel, a tourist, with alarm. The 37-year-old engineer from Akron, Ohio, was shocked to find the lake so diminished and said he fears for the future of the region.
It was Lake Mead that allowed lawns to bloom across the American Southwest when it was formed in 1935 by the creation of the Hoover Dam. At least 96 workers died wedging its titanic concrete shield into the Martian landscape of the Colorado River.
Today, 25million people still rely on it for water, including 90 per cent of the population of nearby Las Vegas.
It is just one of many crucial reservoirs and water sources that are rapidly drying up, with devastating effects on both people and wildlife.
Around 65 per cent of the US is now suffering “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the worst in the country in 122 years. The crisis has been exacerbated this summer by brutal heatwaves, with a massive “heat dome” smashing local records in Canada, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and beyond.
The normally cool states of Oregon and Washington saw highs of 47C and 48C, more akin to summers in Death Valley, a California desert that boasts the hottest ambient temperature reading on Earth.
Scientists are still investigating whether Death Valley broke its own record after a temperature of 54.4C was measured earlier this month. Hundreds of people are estimated to have been killed and thousands hospitalised by the extreme weather, as roads cracked, power lines buckled and fridges shut down.
The heat is felt acutely in places such as Las Vegas. Many people sought some respite in air-conditioned casinos during the heatwave, while others huddled around water misters or even bathed in the Caesar’s Palace fountains.
“That was hell,” said Andrew, a lifelong resident of Las Vegas, who directs traffic outside Caesar’s Palace casino. “Even with sunscreen on, I was shaking.”
At one point, he said he was working in heat of 48C – a personal record and worse than any workday in his memory.
Climate researchers said that the recent heatwave was a “one-in-athousand-years event”, but warned that the schedule of such occurrences had been drastically accelerated by global warming.
“Without the additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ... such an event just does not occur,” said Dr Freiderike Otto of Oxford University.
New research has raised the prospect that such temperatures could become a new sustained normal for American summers and forecasters say more hot weather is on its way this week. Such conditions could be just about manageable with enough water, air conditioning and shelter.
But as the mercury climbs, it is triggering an unpredictable cycle of ecological damage that is destroying the very resources necessary to adapt to it. As lake and river levels fall, the water heats up and evaporates more quickly, which is why the state of California had to evacuate nearly 17 million Chinook salmon from the river to the sea to avoid a mass die-off.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a particularly grim case. Its bed is rich in natural arsenic, and if too much of it is exposed to the sun and left to dry it could release clouds of poisonous dust.
This month federal officials said there was a “high likelihood” that Lake Mead will be officially short of water in 2022, forcing Arizona, Nevada and some of Mexico to impose rationing. Another reservoir, Lake Powell, has only a 79 per cent chance of hitting its minimum safe level to avoid its hydroelectric dam shutting down.
“It’s startling how with each new projection, you had thought it can’t possibly get worse,” John Berggren, a water policy analyst at the charity Western Resource Advocates, told the Colorado Sun. “Even just a year or two ago, most people would have thought these projections are pretty far away from ever happening.”
Brad Udall, a climate scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC news that Arizona and Nevada were only two bad years away from a “major shortage” that would force official cutbacks. Las Vegas has already banned all public ornamental lawns, sending out agents in cars labelled “Water Patrol” to spot illicit sprinkler use and issue fines. Panamint Springs, a tiny “off-grid” resort town with no water, power or telephone lines, offers a stark example of how heat could strain resources.
Its five permanent residents are well adapted to Death Valley, but they and their guests depend on diesel generators.
“It’s going to get exponentially more expensive as the world heats up and fossil fuels get more dear,” says shopkeeper Deirdre Nitz, 26. Ideally, she hopes to stay here long-term, but “we’ll see what ends the world first”.
“It’s a very frightening, sobering future to contemplate,” said Chris Kostman, 54, director of the annual Badwater 135 Ultramarathon, which passed through Panamint Springs on Monday despite the heatwave.
Billed as the toughest foot race on Earth, it is a nightmarish multi-day trek from the salt flats of Badwater Basin in Death Valley to halfway up Mount Whitney, through daytime temperatures of 43 to 46C (110 to 115F).
Participants are forced to breathe air so dry that it sucks the moisture from their mouth in seconds, and walk along roadways that grow hot enough to melt the soles of their shoes. Contestants train extensively by jogging in saunas and heavy clothes.
“People die in Death Valley from heat stress every year. It’s a very serious thing,” said Mr Kostman. “What our athletes do is very extraordinary. They train for it, and they’re athletes, and they’re super fit... that’s not the same as normal people, sedentary people, people with other health issues. That type of heat is very dangerous for some segments of the population.”
Before organising the marathon, Mr Kostman was an archaeologist, studying bronze age and iron age cultures that suffered ecological catastrophe.
“Empires rise and fall, and a lot of the time it’s because of climate change,” he said. “There are things happening on this planet that are largely beyond our control at this point, and with huge health implications.”
On a lonely road on the edge of Death Valley on Monday, close to midnight, marathoner Rob Hunter was trudging through the pitch darkness.
Having come here from Ohio with Kyle Wittel, one of his crew members, he had fallen into last place and barely made the Panamint milestone on time.
“I’ve been throwing up all day,” said the 61-year-old teacher from Ohio, forcing his words out between heavy breaths as red lights flashed on his fluorescent vest.
“You can’t keep food in. Can’t keep water in. Got to keep moving.”
He didn’t make the next milestone.
‘There are things happening on this planet that are beyond our control... with huge health implications’