The level of Flaming Gorge Reservoir will drop by 9 feet under a plan announced Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in yet another emergency move to keep power generation possible 450 miles downstream at the Glen Canyon Dam.
With Lake Powell at historic low levels and further declines forecasted, the lake’s volume is expected to fall to a critical threshold below which water cannot pass through the dam’s turbines without wrecking them.
To forestall that possibility, the bureau plans to inject nearly 1 million acre-feet of water into Powell through a combination of holding back releases into the Colorado River from Glen Canyon Dam and releasing 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge...