For Star subscribers: Lake Powell is less than 35 feet above the level at which Glen Canyon Dam's generators would be turned off. But there's no detailed plan on what to do if that happens. Authorities say they're working very…
Tony Davis With Lake Powell sitting a shade less than 35 feet above the level at which Glen Canyon Dam's generators would be turned off, the agency that markets the dam's hydropower to five million people across the West has no plan for finding replacement power should that worst-case scenario happen.
Last week, the lake fell just below 3,525 feet, hitting 3,524.68 on Thursday. Federal and state officials have considered that 3,525 feet offers a buffer, protecting the lake from dropping below 3,490. "Having it below the minimum power pool level used to be academic — we used to discuss it for fun," said Clayton Palmer, a longtime economist and environmental protection specialist for the agency's Clayton Palmer, of the agency's Utah office near Salt Lake City.
Now, when it comes to the power administration's planning efforts,"Everything is on the table. It could be a plan for power replacement, or to reduce commitments to our customers" to deliver electricity, said Palmer, who has worked for the agency 35 years."It could be to reduce our costs by lowering staff levels and maintenance expenses.
The historically bad spring-summer runoff into the lake in 2021 was the second worst in recorded history. It was"not predictable and accelerated the decline from what we knew three years ago," Meiman added. "We have meetings twice week to talk about how customers would replace power if it would be lost," said Palmer.
If the dam stops producing power, the tribal agency will have to secure power elsewhere at a possibly much high cost, said Srinivasa Venigalla, the authority's deputy general manager for electricity and communications,. The project sells electricity to private utilities, utility cooperatives, tribes, state and federal agencies and other rural power suppliers that operate in six states: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming.
The second biggest Arizona buyer of project power is the Phoenix-area Salt River Project. It gets less than 1% of its total electricity from the Colorado River project and mainly relies on that power to serve peak summertime demand, said Grant Smedley, the utility's director of resource planning, acquisition and forecasting.
Last year, the association's members received 39% of their energy from all the hydropower projects combined, Gerak said. In 2004, as the lake approached a then-record low level of 3,555 feet during the early stages of the current drought, a WAPA official warned that a cutoff of Glen Canyon Dam power could have serious consequences for customers and the agency.
None of this happened. The West turned wetter starting in 2005 and while the drought later accelerated again, the dam didn't fall to 3,555 feet again until last year.
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