UNEP reports American west faces water, power shortages due to climate crisis

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau

UNITED NATIONS, 3^rd August. UN Environment Programme warned on Tuesday that two of the largest reservoirs in the United States are at dangerously low levels due to the climate crisis and overconsumption of water, which could affect water and electricity supply for millions in six western states and Mexico.

UNEP said that Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at their lowest levels ever and are at risk of reaching “dead pool status”, meaning that the water in the dams would be so low it could no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations.

Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at UNEP that “The conditions in the American west, which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin, have been so dry for more than 20 years that we’re no longer speaking of a drought,”

“We refer to it as ‘aridification’ – a new very dry normal.”

Lake Mead, located in Nevada and Arizona, was created in the 1930s by the construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It is the largest artificial body of water in the US.

Lake Powell, located in Utah and Arizona, is the second largest and was created in the 1960s with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam.

The reservoirs provide water and electricity to tens of millions of people in the states of Nevada, Arizona, California, Wyoming, Colorado