One of the driest 22-year periods in centuries is colliding with the river's chronic overuse. Lake Mead is now just 37% full, headed for a first-ever official shortage and sinking toward its lowest levels since it was filled. Since 2000, the water level in the reservoir, which is the largest in the country, has dropped about 140 feet. The effects of years of severe drought and temperatures pushed higher by climate change are strikingly visible along Lake Mead’s retreating shorelines near Las Vegas, where the growing “bathtub ring” of whitish minerals coats the rocky desert slopes. But the rules for managing the river and dividing up its water - which were laid down nearly a century ago starting with the 1922 Colorado River Compact and which have repeatedly been tweaked - are now facing the greatest strains since the dam was built. With the concrete figures are words that encapsulate why the dam was built, as laid out in a 1928 law: FLOOD CONTROL, NAVIGATION, IRRIGATION, WATER STORAGE and POWER.Įighty-six years after its completion in 1935, the infrastructure at Hoover Dam continues doing what it was designed to do: holding water and sending it coursing through intake tunnels, spinning turbines and generating electricity.
In five relief sculptures by Oskar Hansen, muscular men are shown gripping a boat’s wheel, harvesting an armful of wheat, standing beside cascading water and lifting a heavy weight overhead. On top of the dam, where visitors peer down the graceful white arc of its face, one of its art deco-style towers is adorned with a work of art that memorializes the purposes of the dam. BOULDER CITY, Nevada - Hoover Dam towers more than 700 feet above Black Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada state line, holding back the waters of the Colorado River.
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