Arizona Water Shortage

Right now that reservoir is about 40 percent full.

Arizona water shortage. Farmers ranchers and dairymen may use more water than the cities says julie murphree of the arizona farm bureau but they do so to produce food and fiber that the state consumes even if many. The long term drought status for each watershed is determined by comparing the precipitation and streamflow percentiles for the past 24 36 and 48 months to. If upstream states continue to be unable to make up the shortage lake mead whose surface is now about 1 085 feet above sea level will drop to 1 000 feet by 2020. This report was prepared by the arizona drought monitoring technical committee july 7 2020.

Arizona gets almost 40 percent of its water from the colorado river which draws its water from lake mead the biggest reservoir in the country. Arizona leads the nation in comprehensive water supply management. Arizona will avoid a water shortage next year but water users may be forced to cut back in 2020 according to a new federal report released wednesday. Bureau of reclamation s outlook.

Arizona s long term drought status map is updated quarterly and the next update in early july will reflect the conditions of april may and june. Unfortunately most of rural arizona that is outside the phoenix tucson corridor was largely ignored and left to an uncertain future. This has resulted in lake mead dropping to historically low reservoir levels. Under present conditions that.

That future has arrived. Last year the arizona department of water resources updated its groundwater model and discovered that pinal county did not have enough groundwater to meet the legal requirements for dozens of. While this is cause for concern these conditions are not unexpected. Most recent projections show a probability of shortage as soon as 2020 although expected shortage volumes are relatively small compared to arizona s total colorado river allocation.