FARMINGTON, N.M.—The Bureau of Reclamation will quadruple the amount of water that’s released from Navajo Reservoir into the San Juan River this week thanks to heavy snow this winter in Colorado.
The release, which will start Monday, will compensate for the spring melting of the Colorado snowpack to the north, which had reached 160 percent of the 30-year average Sunday.
When that snow melts, it will become 1.3 million acre feet of water flowing into Navajo Reservoir. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, which can meet the annual water needs of one to two U.S. households.
The release will increase per day by about 1,000 cubic feet per second to reach 3,000 cubic feet per second by Wednesday. The bureau now releases 750 cubic feet per second from Navajo Reservoir.
“We need to release the necessary volume to manage it and create available storage for the water,” Pat Page of the Bureau of Reclamation said.
The last big snowpack occurred during the winter of 2005, but did not affect the reservoir in the same way that’s anticipated this year because the region was coming out of a drought and there was plenty of room in the reservoir, Page said.
Unless the hydrology of the San Juan Basin and the estimated inflow change dramatically, Page said the release will remain at 3,000 cubic feet per second until May, when it will increase to 5,000 cubic feet per second and remain there for about a month.
The large spring runoff will mean a healthy supply of water for irrigators and municipal water users downstream.
Information from: The Daily Times,
