The Real Problem Isn't Drought — It's Math
If we had released just 5% less water since 1996, Lake Powell would be roughly 97 feet higher today.
If we had released just 5% less water every year since 1996, Lake Powell would be roughly 97 feet higher today than it is.
That is not a climate claim, a drought claim, or a future-modeling claim. It is an arithmetic fact we can compute directly from the Bureau of Reclamation's own daily measurements. Every drop that went through Glen Canyon Dam is on the ledger. Every drop that came in is too. The math is available. We have not been doing it.
This article walks through a single question and one answer: how much of Lake Powell's current low elevation is drought, and how much is just math we chose not to do?
The receipts
Starting January 1, 1996, Lake Powell sat at 3681 ft — more than 170 feet higher than today and close to full pool. Between then and now, about 154 feet of elevation have left the reservoir.
We can replay those 30 years under different release rules using the exact same historical inflows. Less water released each day means more water sitting in the lake, and the lake rises accordingly. Here is what the reservoir would have looked like if, at every step, we had released a little less:
Replaying actual inflows from Jan 1996 under reduced release rates. Accounts for evaporation and spillway. Dashed lines show key boat ramp access thresholds.
- 5% less released: Lake would be 97 feet higher today (3624 ft).
- 10% less released: 137 feet higher (3663 ft).
- 15% less released: 152 feet higher (3678 ft) — essentially back to 1996 levels.
The black line is what actually happened. The colored lines are what would have happened under tighter management of the same water.
"But the drought did it"
Look at the next chart. It shows every water year since 1996 as two bars side by side: what came in (inflow) and what was let out (outflow).
Outflow tracks inflow closely most years. Evaporation (~500-600 KAF/yr) is not reflected in either bar — it is the gap.
In almost every year, outflow is larger than inflow. That is the structural deficit everyone talks about. But it is also a management pattern: when the lake gets wet years, we release more. When it gets dry years, we still release a lot. Over 30 years, the cumulative gap adds up — and it does not include the water that evaporates.
The evaporation gap
Lake Powell loses roughly 500,000–600,000 acre-feet a year to evaporation. That is a full-sized reservoir every decade or two, vanishing into the air.
Evaporation is not on the outflow ledger. It is not counted against anyone's allocation. It is just gone. Accounting for 30 years of it is approximately 17 MAF — comparable to the entire capacity of Lake Powell.
If the operating rules for the system pretend that evaporation is not happening, the system will slowly drain whenever inflow falls short of outflow. That is exactly what we have watched happen.
What this means
The post-2026 operating rules are on the table right now. This site exists to make the alternatives visible in plain numbers:
- How each proposed plan performs under the driest decade we have on record, so nobody can say "your model is too optimistic."
- What each one looks like over 10, 20, and 40 years.
- How the Colorado River Abundance Act fits in over the long run as we build new infrastructure.
- Which plans we think are worth pushing for, and why.
The case in every one of those articles starts here: we have enough water. We just need to manage the system as if the water matters.
Read the plan-by-plan breakdowns: No Action · Basic Coordination · Enhanced Coordination · Max Operational Flexibility · Supply Driven · The Abundance Act · Head-to-Head verdict.