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Show Colorado River Runoff Forecast Above Average Since May's precipitation precipita-tion was above average a the Upper Colorado River Basin, the forecast fore-cast for April through July runoff from the Colorado Col-orado River watershed as been raised to 10 million acre -feet, or about 121 per cent of the .long-time average, the Bureau of Reclamation announced today. About 1.2 million acre-feet acre-feet of the spring runoff is expected to originate in the Green River drainage drain-age above Flaming Gorge Dam. Of this amount 150.00 0 acre-feet will be siored inFontenelle Reservoir Res-ervoir and the remainder will be regulated at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Reser-voir. The inflow will raise Flaming Gorge Reservoir Re-servoir to a seasonal high of 6,030 feet above m s.l. at the end of June ith a "live" content of about 3,350,000 acre-'eet. acre-'eet. Fontenelle Reservoir Reser-voir should fill to its maximum capacity of 345,0 0 0 acre-feet at elevation ele-vation 6,506 feet by the end of June and then hold year elevation 6,504 feet or the following two months. The reservoir "11 be slowly drawn down to elevation 6,485 feet fythe end of March 1974. Above normal precipi-toon precipi-toon accumulation and remaining snowpack in m San Juan drainage area should cause Navajo wservoir to fill to its normal maximum level "elevation 6,085 feet. "e level of the reser-lr reser-lr should stay above nation 6,080 feet dur-the dur-the remainder of the urrent recreation sea-on. sea-on. After the reservoir "lied and the inflow Sr' leases are gected to remain at s at 2,000 c.f.s. dur-s?re dur-s?re remainder of the T er andfa'l months, jne runoff forecast for the Gunnison River above Blue Mesa Dam is 780.000 acre-feet, which is 99 per cent of normal. The reservoir now at elevation 7,491 feet, should rise to elevation ele-vation 7,518 feet by the end of August. The lake should drop slowly-through slowly-through the year to a winter low of elevation 7,476 feet and contain 480.000 acre-feet of usable usa-ble water storage. Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, is now at elevation 3,627 above mean sea level or about one-foot above the highest high-est level of the lake previously pre-viously reached. It contains con-tains 15.0 million acre-feet acre-feet of active storage. By midsummer the reservoir re-servoir is expected to rise about 7 more feet to elevation 3,634. Lake Powell will slowly decrease de-crease to about elevation 3,632 feet by next spring. Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, is at elevation eleva-tion 1,186 feet above mean sea level, or about 32 feet higher than a year ago. The reservoir is now 35 feet below the top of the raised spillway gates at Hoover Dam and should remain near this height through July. It is scheduled sche-duled to rise about 5 feet by the end of September 1973. The Hoover Dam Reservoir at present contains 21.0 million acre-feet of available storage or about 80 per cent of its capacity. |