Lake Mead
This is a telling example of how convoluted and complicated water policy and water supply is in the Southwest and West. If Lake Mead drops below 1,050, the water will no longer underground to Vegas, because the intake pipes will no longer be underwater. They are desperately building newer, deeper intakes. It also means electricity to L.A. would be severely impacted.
If the drought persists and more water is diverted from the Colorado, the lake could drop to 1,050 feet. That would prevent water from flowing into the intake pipe and cut 40 percent of Las Vegas’s supply — the disaster Mulroy is trying to head off. Hoover Dam, completed in 1935 to regulate the river and form Lake Mead, wouldn’t be able to produce electricity for the 750,000 people it supplies in Los Angeles.
In ten years, perhaps less, there will be no water for Phoenix, Los Vegas and Los Angeles. People need to pull their heads out of the groud and face it – there will be no water.
Climate Change Refugee planning need be an integral part of x-urban planning, now. People will go where there is water.
Which, unfortunately, is here.