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Sam Morris / Sun file photo
Discoloration around the banks of Lake Mead shows how much the water level has declined over the years.
By Conor Shine (contact) 
Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Special coverage
Map of Lake Mead National Recreation Area
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
601 Nevada Way, Boulder City
A wet winter in the Rocky Mountains has translated into more water in Lake Mead, pushing the lake’s elevation to its highest point since 2009.
The lake’s surface level has risen nearly 30 feet to 1,110 feet after hitting a low in November. Projections have the lake rising another 40 feet over the next year, helping stave off a potential water shortage.
This year’s surge is being attributed to “substantial snowpack” in the Rocky Mountains, which led to more water running into Lake Powell, which lies on the Arizona-Utah border upstream of Lake Mead.
According to Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Rose Davis, excess water from Lake Powell is being sent to Lake Mead under conditions established in the Colorado River Compact.
Lake Mead’s elevation had plunged nearly 100 feet over the past decade, as a lingering drought choked the Colorado River. The lake came within six feet of dropping below the point that would have caused a water shortage. Further drops would have triggered limits on water use in the valley, but the recent increase has pushed the date of a possible shortage back to at least 2014, Davis said.
“It’s too early to say the drought is over, but we’ve had a great year,” Davis said.
Lake Mead National Recreation Area park planner Jim Holland said boaters and beachgoers will be affected.
As the water level receded, muddy shorelines that had once been underwater have been exposed. Holland said the rise will mean a more comfortable, less muddy day at the beach for visitors.
But the increased elevation isn’t enough to reopen any of the four boat launch ramps closed in the past decade, Holland said.
The ramp at Overton Beach on the northern part of the lake would be the first to reopen, he said, but park officials are waiting to see if the water level will stabilize or continue rising before investing the money to restart a water treatment plant that was mothballed as part of the closure.
“We need some guarantee of what the lake level is going to be,” he said. “We can’t spend that money to open it up and then have to close it shortly after.”
And boaters will have to deal with new terrain, as parts of the lake are newly submerged. Holland advises boaters be cautious, warning that rock outcroppings once exposed could be covered by just a few feet of water.
“Be careful near the shore,” he said. “It’s very difficult for us to stay ahead of hazards that are being created by rapidly changing elevations … The lake’s very different from the last time you visited.”
Since day one of Lake Mead the levels have cycled. Once again it is showing it comes back. Early projects are saying that next winter will be similar to this winter and that will bring the lake back up even more.
Glad to see it, Lake Mead is a blast and needed to keep Las Vegas alive and well.
Im with you Vegaslee, the outlook is good and lets keep the water coming!
Thirty feet of new water. Four more years of a wet winters up north should put us back to a safer level of water.
Good news for us and the whole west coast. Hopefully, like vegaslee said this winter will be wet and we can get a good snow pack AGAIN so that Lake Mead can get back to the way it was. It will definitely take years to do but I think that it will happen.
All is looking up and hopefully will stay that way.
The ONE THING that this reporter DID NOT address in this article that greatly pertains to water and the water levels, is now the recent addition OF the City of North Las Vegas Waste Water Treatment Plant's treated water going into LAKE MEAD!!!!!
It is a whole bunch of continuous water flow 24/7 now, that appears to be non-stop. What about that???
Kindly, if you will, add to this report/article, and also include information on water quality, the laboratory reports stating exactly what the treated water is like leaving the plant entering into the Sloan Channel, then when just as it enters Lake Mead. Please give us a tickler of some science, to not only make me happy, but the inquiring minds of many others who live along the Sloan Channel, and those who swim in Lake Mead. That would truly be RESPONSIBLE REPORTING.
Thank you very much for all you do for our community!
Star Ali Mistriel
Gorebull warming was supposed to prevent this.
THis is great news!!!
That global warming is amazing!
Hi guys,
In response to the comment about the effect of North Las Vegas's new Waste Water Treatment Plant, I tried to contact someone at the Bureau of Reclamation (which oversees Lake Mead) but I haven't heard anything back from them.
I've done some quick math based on some previous reporting by our others in our newsroom, and from what I can tell, the amount of water flowing from that new treatment plant is minimal when compared to the size of Lake Mead.
In this story (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jun...) we reported that at peak capacity, the plant will discharge 25 million gallons of treated water daily.
While that may seem like a lot, Lake Mead measures its water supply in acre-feet, which converts at a ratio of 1 acre-foot equaling ~326,000 gallons.
Using the conversion, North Las Vegas discharges about 76 acre feet of water daily to Lake Mead.
According to this story (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jan...), about 8.23 million acre-feet of water is discharged into Lake Mead annually from upstream reservoirs (although that number is higher this year due to the excessive snow).
Boiling it all down the discharge from North Las Vegas's new treatment plant would account for at most .3 percent of all the water flowing into Lake Mead in a given year.
As far as the water quality, I don't have specific information on that, although it's been covered some in other stories.
The city maintains its clean water (it has been treated), although some residents along the channel have raised issues with the odor from the water (see the first story I linked).
Hope that helps.
-Conor
This is bad news for the naysayers. They will need to find another negative story to hang onto now.
If I might add to the fray....
The amount of water receive from the Colorado River is based on a credit system, it has been a while since I knew the exact amount, but the import part of the equation is RETURN credits.
Anything we put back into Lake Mead gets us more from the straw.
All restoration efforts for the channels and eradication efforts of the dreaded Tamarisk (Salt Cedar) are specifically geared to maximize RETURN.
btw, it wasn't too long ago when Lake Mead was going over the spillway.
Mr. Keith,
The 30 feet is what it has come up since last November. They are expecting another 40 feet by years end. That will put the lake at 1150.
One more year like this and we will be over the spill way again. That would be a good sight to see. Has been a while since we saw water running over the dam. ;)
Las Vegas gets its drinking water from Lake Mead. The new North Las Vegas Water Treatment Facility does discharge water into Lake Mead, but that water originated in Lake Mead so it doesn't count as an influx.
Even if there was a torrential downpour in Southern Nevada, it wouldn't affect Lake Mead by much. The influx of water into Lake Mead comes from the Colorado Rockies.
@Heretic...........The Colorado River Compact was designed by Herbert Hoover in the 1920's. California gets the lions share of the water AND power the dam produces. About 59%. Las Vegas gets about 5%.
PGelsman, Thanks for the numbers. That looks about right. Every member of the CRC gets a portion but not every member uses their allotment.
I was trying to think back to my college days when I worked in the Limnology department at UNLV. We were more concerned with the nutrient impoundment caused by Glen Canyon Dam and its effects on plankton production in the Colorado River System.
Yeah it was exciting as it sounds, but I digress.
I believe every municipality in the Valley discharges treated water into Lake Mead. So I'm not sure why NLV is suddenly such a big deal.
@LVLawDog...I don't think it's that big of a deal. The only complaints is the smell of the discharge by residents. The only other complaint is that Clark County doesn't like how NLV went about the start of the discharge of the treated waste water.
Why were they off by 45ft. on their initial projections?? That's an extreme miscalculation! Credibiltiy is coming into question. I'm not quite willing to accept their future projections as facts.
Jimmy,
I think the size of last year's snowpack took everyone by surprise. The NOAA originally predicted a less than average snowpack. It turned out to be huge. Ironically, the year before was an El Nino year and large snowpack was predicted that never materialized. You just never know with Mother Nature.
> Lake Mead measures its water supply in acre-feet, which converts at a ratio of 1 acre-foot equaling ~326,000 gallons.
According to the Bureau of Reclamation there are 28,537,000 acre-feet of water in the lake or 9.3 billion gallons.
Knowing this makes me feel less guilty for that time I did #1.
No matter how you feel about this discussion, I think that is refreshing that Conor actually responds to comments and says he will try to find the facts. In this day and age of big ego journalism, if you can call it that, I'll put my money on this guy.
Good for you my friend.
No matter how you feel about this discussion, I think that it is refreshing that Conor actually responds to comments and says he will try to find the facts. In this day and age of big ego journalism, if you can call it that, I'll put my money on this guy.
Good for you my friend.
Still a hot dry place! It is good that people don't have to move out of Vegas. It would be something if Vegas was just the Strip and a bunch of Fema trailers to hold alien workers. Maybe move it all to area 51!