Sinking waters in the Colorado basin
I subscribe to Dr. Tim O’Shea’s newsletter, the most recent of which I link to here. In it he talks about Lake Mead, the reason we have a large city in Nevada named Las Vegas. (There is also a Las Vegas, New Mexico, where we have spent more time. The series Longmire was shot in large part there. What we did there stays there, and anyway can easily be forgotten.)
There is considerable concern that Lake Mead is being drained and that in the near future it will be a “Dead Pool,” that is, it will no longer be able to run the turbines that send electricity to Las Vegas and California.
I do not place much faith in Dr. O’Shea, as I imagine in real life he is very busy with his practice and doesn’t have much time to go really in depth on things. His work on Covid, while useful, is not deep enough, that is, he believes in viruses. He has a habit of talking down to his readers, too. That is also the case with his thoughts on Mead, but it did cause me to look into the matter for myself, reading a long, long piece about the area put out by, I think, the National Park Service, but maybe the Bureau of Reclamation or BLM. I don’t know. I’ve lost the piece, and you are on your own anyway. I did learn that Lake Mead collects 97% of its water from the Colorado, and damned little from any other source, because it sits in the midst of a drought-prone region that normally has very little moisture.
Continue reading “Whither Lake Mead?” →