OCR Text |
Show Colorado River Runoff prospects below normal report indicates Since last April's precipitation precipita-tion was below average in the Upper Colorado River Basin, the forecast for April through July runoff from the Colorado River watershed has now dropped drop-ped to 6.1 million aore-fect, or 1 about 74 percent of the longtime long-time average, the Bureau of Reclamation announced. Due to a heavy accumulation accumula-tion of snowfall in Wyoming, 2.0 million acre-feet of the siofing runoflf is expected to originate In the Green River drainage above Flaming Gorge Dam. About 150,000 acre-feet of this will be stored in Fon-tenelle Fon-tenelle Reservoir and the remainder re-mainder will be regulated at Flaming Gorge R e servoir which is now about elevation 6,013 feet and has a "live" content of about 2,725,000 acre-feet. acre-feet. This reservoir ls expected to rise about 24 feet by July, and to be maintained at about this high point until drawdown draw-down next winter. The small amout of snow in southern Colorado and New Mexico will contribute only about 270,000 acre-feet to Navajo Lake on the San Juan River. This amount is only a'bout 32 percent of average. The elevation of Navajo Lake, now about 6,015 feet, should rise about another 10 feet and remain near that level through the recreation season. Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, is now at elevation 3,610 feet above mean sea level. It contains 13.2 million acre-feet of active storage. By midsummer the reservoir is expected to rise about 12 more feet to elevation 3,622, the same level that the lake reached in 1971. Lake Powell will slowly decrease to about elevation 3,608 feet by next spring. Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, is at elevation 1,155 feet albove mean sea level, or about 6 feet higher than a year ago. The reservoir is now 66 ft. b-low b-low the top of the raised spillway spill-way gates at Hoover Dam and should remain near this height hei-ght through June. Then it is sheduled to rise about 4 feet by the end of the summer. The Hoover Dam reservoir at present contains 17.0 million acre-feet of available storage or 62 percent of its capacity. |