Lake Powell: Too empty to power, too important to drain

There is a clear intersection point where Lake Powell’s water ends and Glen Canyon’s once-water-buried land begins, and it can be described in one word: stinky.

Stinky from the smell of dead fish.

As the water levels in Lake Powell continue to recede, over 100 red-rock side canyons of the reservoir dry up, with streams creeping back to the main body of water.

It didn’t used to be that way, though. The winding sandstone canyons that give Lake Powell its popular views were once filled with water. In the 1980s, Lake Powell sat at 3,700 feet. Today, it sits about 160 feet lower — 27% full. Thus, the dead fish.

In Powell’s main body of water, the striking bathtub marks on the red-rock walls can make a tourist feel like they’re actively sinking.

Up close, the rings are prominent. 160 feet high on the canyon wall, a band of white mineral deposits marks a former waterline. The distance between the water and the white lines show the distance between the water the reservoir was designed to hold and what it actually holds.

It’s a time capsule, with each bathtub mark signaling another year of lower elevation — since the 60s.

The Interior Department and the Bureau of Reclamation are trying to stop more rings from appearing. On April 17, 2026, the bureau announced it plans to raise Powell 54 feet in a year. To do so, it has been releasing more water from Flaming Gorge, which lies 455 river miles upstream and flows into Powell. The Bureau also released 1.5 million acre-feet less of water from Powell, which would have flowed into Lake Mead.

That includes the 21.5 feet of water Lake Powell received from rains since Mid-September — all of it is being stored in the reservoir instead of flowing downstream to Mead, in hopes that it may been enough to make up for the 180 feet of loss it was sitting at just days prior.

The 2027-2028 Colorado River Operations, which went into effect Oct. 1, created Powell’s minimum water level of 3,510 feet. The new goal is to do everything the bureau can to stop the elevation from dropping below it — from creating another bathtub mark.

But less rain, smaller snowpacks and continual evaporation make that goal difficult to achieve. Even the location of the main marina was in water too shallow to properly operate this year. In the spring, the marina — a huge floating dock with hundreds of houseboats stored in its slips — was relocated to deeper water. It took almost four months, and several hours of manual labor to blast the marina through shallow waters.

The water still left by the marina flows downstream, winding across the lake’s canyons, crossing the Utah border into Arizona, and finally reaches Glen Canyon Dam.

‘The most hated dam there is’

“I think it’s safe to say that in the United States, and maybe even the world, it’s the most hated dam there is,” said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute, a research institute dedicated to restoring Glen Canyon and emptying Lake Powell.

“It was considered by a lot of people to be the single most environmentally damaging project in American history,” he added. “It displaced wildlife, it changed the aquatic habitat and the river ecosystem, and it changed the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon downstream.”

Glen Canyon Dam rises 710 feet above the riverbed — a pale, concrete arc wedged between the red sandstone walls. On its bridge, a visitor can see the blue-green waters of Lake Powell directly below.

The dam — which began construction in 1956 and ended in 1963 — was always intended to act as a savings account for the Upper Basin states — Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.

The 1922 Colorado River Compact, which divided the west into Upper and Lower Basins, stated a key obligation for the Upper Basin states: “not to cause the river to be depleted.” If water elevations drop too low, the Upper Basin is in violation of its contract. However, with unpredictable wet and dry seasons, the Upper Basin states would have to cut their water usage on dry years without a storage reservoir.

“[Glen Canyon Dam] is literally there to meet an accounting obligation,” said Balken, saying the compact allowed Upper Basin states “to make their legally required deliveries downstream and not one drop more.”

To this day, Upper Basin states don’t actually use much water from Lake Powell. Almost all of it flows downstream — and it’s all in the name of compliance with the compact.

The steep, sloped walls hold back less water now than they ever have before, and that has become a real problem for the west.

The problem of power

“When they built it, they never envisioned it being even half full, let alone 27% full,” Balken said.

It’s power generation all depends on water level, and generation operates poorly with an almost empty reservoir. Full pool elevation — 3,700 feet above sea level — is where the lake started in 1980. Now, it sits at 3,539 feet — 161 feet lower.

“Glen Canyon Dam has eight generating units with a combined capacity of 1,320 megawatts,” explained Nick Williams, UCB Region Power Manager from the Bureau of Reclamation. That’s the same amount of power as one and a half Huntington coal plants. “However, that’s the maximum output under ideal conditions.”

The 161-foot drop in elevation means a shallow reservoir. Consequently, there is less force to push water through the dam’s turbines to produce energy.

Over the last five years, Glen Canyon Dam power production has decreased 36%. If the lake drops another 50 feet or so, water levels will be at minimum power pool: a level too low to generate electricity at all.

A study from Utah State University found at minimum power pool, the turbines must be closed, as water flowing through them at the low elevation could cause turbine cavitation. That means all hydroelectric power production would be halted.

Doing so means the west would lose about $100-$200 million a year in electricity sales.

“Hydropower from the Colorado River Storage Project facilities – including Glen Canyon – serves nearly six million customers across the region, including federal and state government agencies, municipal utilities, and irrigation districts,” Williams explained.

The Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Area Power Administration would be forced to buy replacement power at higher prices. Right now, they serve customers across Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Water releases downstream

If Lake Powell water levels drop another 120 feet after reaching minimum power pool, it will hit what researchers call dead pool.

“At this point, no controlled releases can be made downstream,” Williams added. Since the levels are so low, water can no longer be released through the dam by gravity. The Lower Basin states would lose all water access until a solution is implemented.

Currently, water released downstream flows 15 miles south to Lees Ferry — the legal dividing line between the Upper and Lower Basins. As it continues, it sustains the riparian ecosystems alongside the banks of the Grand Canyon.

As it continues west, the water crosses into Nevada and deposits into Lake Mead — the Lower Basin’s primary storage hub. From there, organizations from Arizona, California and Nevada divvy up water resources after they pass through the Hoover Dam to generate more power.

Reaching dead pool at Lake Powell — and not being able to deliver water downstream — would be a violation of the Upper Basin’s contract. Lake Mead elevation would see a steep drop, and the Lower Basin states would have a legal claim that the Upper Basin states failed to deliver the promised water.

The possibility of draining Lake Powell

Utah Sen. John Curtis said there is one main reason why the two basins are unable to come to an agreement on a solution: “There’s not enough water. Nobody can go home and say ‘we got what we need.’ All seven states have to go home and say ‘we didn’t get what we need.’”

The Interior Department’s operating guidelines decision made earlier this year create an immediate framework of stability while states return to the negotiating table to discuss a lengthier, decade-long solution.

The core of the decision — and the source of contention between Southwestern states — is how the water conservation efforts are split.

The four Upper Basin states face no mandatory water reductions — they are subject to voluntary conservation goals. The three Lower Basin states, however, could be required to cut their water usage by up to 3 million acre-feet — as lakes across the west continue to dry up.

Now, water managers are asking what can be done to maintain deliveries downstream while simultaneously saving as much water as possible.

Jack Schmidt, director of USU’s Center for Colorado River Studies, said the logic of consolidating storage in one reservoir is growing as natural water flow declines, even if only to eliminate half of the surface area for which evaporation occurs.

“Some very traditional water managers ask, ‘why not increase power production at Hoover, eliminate power production at Glen, and find replacement power for those Upper Basin users?’” he said.

This is something Balken and the Glen Canyon Institute have been promoting for years.

“There is not enough water to keep Powell and Mead not even full, but just operating functionally,” he said. “We would be lucky to save Lake Mead, and I think we should focus our efforts on doing that.”

Some experts like Balken argue draining Lake Powell reduces evaporation and groundwater seepage, can undo the dam’s environmental damage, and cuts costs for maintaining two reservoirs.

Lake Powell loses an estimated 500,000 acre-feet of water per year to evaporation — and an additional 120,000 acre-feet to seepage through the porous sandstone walls. Lake Mead, by comparison, loses roughly 300,000 acre-feet annually to evaporation. Consolidating storage, proponents argue, could save hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water each year.

To go about the drainage, the Glen Canyon Institute proposes a plan known as “Fill Mead First.” After allowing Powell to lower to dead pool, the Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation would drill river-level bypass tunnels similar to the original diversion tunnels.

Drilling through the porous Navajo sandstone on either side of the dam would require extensive engineering, underground support, and seepage control. Neither the Glen Canyon Institute nor the federal government has published a final itemized cost for bypass tunnels. However, according to Williams, a project of that size and magnitude would require at least a decade of arduous work.

“What would be possible if we didn’t have to protect critical infrastructure?,” asks Balken. “Could we just focus our efforts on saving Lake Mead, and use this as a rethinking of the accounting system to just store the Upper Basin’s water in Mead?”

The Glen Canyon Institute commissioned a legal analysis on their proposal over a decade ago, which revealed that there are no laws that would prohibit Upper Basin storage from moving to Lake Mead. It would, however, require a change in operating criteria, which are updating every two years as western states fail to come to an agreement.

“We’re just in this situation where soon we will have to pick which reservoir is more important. And if you were to poll all of the decision makers and stakeholders in the basin and ask which is more important — Powell or Mead — most of them would say Lake Mead,” he added. “Lake Mead is a bigger reservoir, it generates more hydropower, it generates more tourism revenue, it’s the direct water source for the Las Vegas metro area, which is home to 2.4 million people.”

What draining means on the ground

Other researchers point to the towns and peoples nearest to Glen Canyon as a reason the dam must stay.

Page, Arizona — a short, eight minute drive from the dam — has a population of 7,500 people. It was built in 1957 as a housing base for dam workers, and its economy is almost entirely dependent on Lake Powell tourism and dam operations.

The National Park Service report shows that 4.72 million visitors to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Rainbow Bridge National Monument in 2024 spent $518.2 million in communities near the park units.

Page’s historic tourism economy — built around motorized lake boating, houseboat rentals, and large marinas — would disappear.

The Glen Canyon Institute argues that the loss in tourism revenue from draining Lake Powell could be offset by protecting Lake Mead’s larger tourism economy and unlocking new tourism opportunities in a restored Glen Canyon.

In fact, that is the Glen Canyon Institute’s mission: “to restore Glen Canyon and a free-flowing Colorado River through Grand Canyon,” according to Balken. Changing Glen Canyon Recreation Area to a National Park with proper protections, he said, could be the key to generating the revenue needed for the region.

‘You should repair the dam, not drain the dam’

Patrick Dent, however, sees the situation from the Lower Basin’s perspective — and doesn’t see draining Lake Powell as an option. Dent is the assistant general manager at the Central Arizona Project, one of the main beneficiaries of water released from Lake Mead.

“Our immediate issue in Arizona is the storage behind those Upper Basin reservoirs were meant to make water delivery,” he argued. He added losing water to evaporation in both Powell and Mead is simply “the cost of storage.”

Additionally, Dent said if Lake Powell was drained and hydropower was lost at Glen Canyon Dam, the water added to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam would not increase a substantial amount. Lower Basin states who rely on that power would still be left in a power deficit.

Most importantly, Dent argues that by draining Lake Powell, and thus not fulfilling the terms of the Colorado River Compact, Lower Basin states would be left without a constant flow of water downstream.

“We think that there is a delivery obligation in the Compact,” he said, proposing another solution instead: Fix the outdated infrastructure of the dam.

“You need to investigate engineering fixes that would let you use the full range,” he said. “You should repair the dam, not drain the dam.”

Instead of propping up Powell with extra water from Flaming Gorge, Dent proposed engineering new infrastructure that allows water to flow downstream at lower elevations, including reinforcing the low-level outlet pipes.

He argues Glen Canyon Dam hydrology is still unknown. Though there has been drying for 30 years, some studies from the Bureau of Reclamation show potential wet years in the future, and draining Lake Powell is an irreversible decision.

“I know it’s been empty now, it’s been empty for a while, but it took 18 years to fill the first time,” he said. “And so I think making a decision or advocating to drain the dam or decommission the dam right now is premature. I think we’re still learning about our hydrology, we’re learning about a new normal, and we should think about that for a decade or two ... .”

These fixes would allow Glen Canyon Dam to safely release water across its full elevation range — even below the traditional minimum power pool — without compromising infrastructure or risking cavitation.

Regardless of whether water is drained out of the lake, water in the west will most likely come to a day of reckoning soon: A Bureau of Reclamation study predicts the lake will hit dead pool elevations in April of next year.

“In the 20th century on the Colorado River, nature was bent to human will,” USU’s study reads. “Because we are now fully consuming its waters, and inflows are expected to decline — in the 21st century humans will be forced to bend to the will of nature.”