From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
Due to the increasing severity of the ongoing drought, and in an effort to conserve as much water as possible, the Bureau of Reclamation will decrease the release from Navajo Dam to 250 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Monday, March 16, at 8:00 AM.
This change provides an opportunity to conserve approximately 1,500 acre-feet of stored water during the remainder of March while downstream targets are being met by side inflows.
Releases from Navajo Dam are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit and to support base flows through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat reach from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to adjustment based on river flows and weather conditions.
If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamation’s Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
