AFP, published Sunday 03 July 2022 at 07:12
Since Adam Dailey began sailing Lake Mead fifteen years ago, the shoreline has receded several hundred feet under the influence of the chronic drought ravaging the western United States.
The launch points that covered the shores of this lake near Las Vegas were abandoned one by one without reaching the surface, and only one ramp is now practicable for boaters wishing to launch their boat.
“Now everyone is struggling to use a single ramp and see how we can get away with that,” Adam Dailey told AFP.
“It’s pretty sad what’s happening. But we still come to try to enjoy it as much as possible.”
Lake Mead, man-made by the cyclopean construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, is the largest water reservoir in the United States on paper. But it hasn’t reached full capacity since 1983.
This does not prevent the 640 km2 large lake from supplying tens of millions of people and countless farms in the southwest of the country with water.
But its reserves are dwindling at an alarming rate, and the reservoir is now only at 25% capacity.
The National Parks Agency, which manages tourist access to Lake Mead, has spent more than $40 million since 2010 to allow boaters to navigate it.
Every time the lake level drops by 120 cm, it costs an additional two to three million to adjust the boat launch, a process that is becoming “increasingly difficult and expensive”.
“Climate change-related water level decline and 20 years of drought have altered the park’s shores,” the agency summarizes on its website.
– Layers –
To illustrate the phenomenon, since 2001 the national park administration has put up signs showing the location of the lake shore at different times. By the end of June, the water is already about 300 paces below the sign marking the 2021 level.
The concentric layers left by the water on the bluffs give a good illustration of the extent of the drought that has prevailed since the 1983 floods.
“We used to water ski here,” Jaxkxon Zacher told AFP. “And that island over there was just the tip that was made 25 years ago.”
The lower the water, the more islands and other rocky reefs appear, creating so many hazards for boats. “Every day someone rips off their propeller because there wasn’t a rock the week before, but now it’s a foot or two feet down,” begins Jason Davis, who drives boats on the lake.
“There are rigged boats running aground, people ripping open their hulls”.
The price of some boats reaches several hundred thousand dollars, so a navigational error can be expensive.
– A new job? –
Some, fed up with the vagaries of navigating the lake and the long queues to launch their boat, have set their sights on more inviting waters.
Such is the case with certain rivers that lie downstream of the Hoover Dam, like Willow Beach in neighboring Arizona, where kayakers spray themselves under the blazing sun.
There, a small marina allowed Steve McMasters to moor his boat. “On weekends, the wait time to get your boat out of the water (at Lake Mead) can approach four or five hours,” he explains.
“I spent four months on the waiting list to get my place” at Willow Beach, “I was lucky,” adds the sailor.
Climatologists explain that there have been droughts in the American West that have lasted more than 20 years. But the phenomenon, now combined with rising temperatures driven largely by human activity, is actually transforming the region.
Higher temperatures mean less precipitation and snow at higher elevations melts earlier in the season and faster.
The Colorado River is therefore deprived of the stable and steady water supply it has enjoyed for centuries.
On a climatic level, Lake Mead is just a newborn, but for humans it is disappearing at an alarming rate.
For Jason Davis, the boat dealer, many more people should come and see the extent of the damage for themselves.
“Until you see that, you can’t measure it. You don’t think about it until it’s too late,” he says.
What if the lake level continues to drop? “I have to look for another job.”