The water in Lake Mead just outside of Las Vegas is falling fast. It has been for years in the midst of a drought that’s been raging for over a century. Add in a splash of climate change and the states of the southwest have a real problem. And that problem has now come to a critical point.
Just a few more feet and water levels at the lake providing 90% of the water to Las Vegas will be considered a “dead pool”, meaning that no water is flowing through Hoover Dam downstream… and no electricity is being produced by the dam’s turbines. Could that possibly mean the end of Las Vegas?
Vegas needs both power and water. Currently, Lake Mead is holding less than 30% of its capacity. At the beginning of 2020 the water levels were about 1,100 feet, but now they’re just over a thousand. Experts fear that the lake will drop another 30 feet over the next twelve months, and that means massive problems for Arizona, Nevada, and especially California.
Once the lake gets to around 900 feet, Hoover Dam cannot make electric power. But Vegas is only getting about 20% of the electricity they need from the dam, with the rest going to other states. The city does get 90% of their water from the reservoir, but interestingly enough Nevada is only allocated to use less than 2% of all the water pumped from the lake each year.
Plus, even if Lake Mead falls below 900 feet and reaches dead pool status, Las Vegas will still have access to water from a pump they installed for the city itself which is 100 feet deeper below the surface. So while other states may suffer from water shortages and blackouts, it certainly looks as if Las Vegas will survive… even if everything goes wrong.
