Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Canyons in eastern Utah will churn this spring with the rough hydraulic equivalent of fifty thousand toilets flushing simultaneously, a figure the Associated Press chose to include in the lede of a story about the collapse of the Colorado River Basin. Federal officials say the toilets are metaphorical, disappointing mainly Germans.
Damn, they need to do a lot of flushing. (welcomia/depositphotos)
The Bureau of Reclamation announced last week that it will drain up to 1 million acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir over the next 12 months and send it downstream into Lake Powell, where it will then not go to Lake Mead. This is necessary, the agency explained, because Lake Powell is at 23 percent capacity and approaching a threshold called “minimum power pool,” below which the Glen Canyon Dam turbines begin sucking air and the dam itself enters what WyoFile politely described as “danger of structural failure.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum thanked the governors of seven states for their “diligent” work on “these unprecedented drought conditions,” a phrase the Bureau has now used in each of these last four unprecedented years.
The plan will raise Lake Powell approximately 54 feet. It will lower Flaming Gorge approximately 35. It will reduce the Hoover Dam’s output by 40 percent. This stuff is really dull, so you can see why the AP went with “50,000 toilets.” Can’t get people to read this stuff otherwise. Unless you do what we do here at Odd News and drop scatalogical humor throughout. Keep going, there’s more. Get it, “keep going?” I didn’t say it was high-brow humor.
The plan also reduces releases from Lake Powell into Lake Mead, the reservoir previously famous for surfacing dead bodies with unpaid gambling debts as the water recedes. This means Lake Mead will now resemble its 2022 self, only with fewer bodies because we found a bunch already. A downstream consequence is that warmer surface water may accelerate the spread of smallmouth bass, an invasive species currently outcompeting the humpback chub, a threatened native fish whose name is the only thing about this paragraph that is funny.
Joel Ferry, director of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, reviewed the latest snowpack numbers and told KSL that “tough decisions are going to have to be made, like right now.” The decision ultimately made was to move water from one lake into an adjacent lake. In Moab, Kael Weston appeared by video at a public meeting and described the Colorado River itself as “slow, low, and sad,” which is also how one might describe an ex-boyfriend, or all men in general.
A 2022 release of 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge was followed by a wet winter that the Valdezes credited to Mother Nature. Mother Nature has not been cooperating since.
The Bureau said it will retain “as much operational flexibility as possible” going forward, a phrase meaning the water is running out and there is no plan. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area has separately warned boaters that the declining reservoir is exposing new navigational hazards. The toilets will keep flushing. No word on how much water comes from Rhode Island’s 50,000 toilets.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
