Click the link to read the article on the KVNF website (Brody Wilson). Here’s an excerpt:
August 4, 2026
The largest reservoir in Colorado, Blue Mesa, is holding just over 240,000 acre-feet — “roughly about a third of the volume that we would typically expect to see in the reservoir in this time of year,” says Caleb Foy, senior water resources engineer at the Colorado River District. April-through-July inflow, 151,000 acre-feet, is the lowest unregulated inflow on record. This time of year, Blue Mesa is operated to maintain a minimum flow at the Whitewater gauge, far downstream, just above where the Gunnison joins the Colorado. A 2012 federal record of decision sets base-flow targets there — as low as 750 cubic feet per second, though June and July normally call for “upwards of just over 1,000 CFS at 1,050 CFS,” Foy says. Those flows exist to protect biology and recreation in the lower Gunnison, and endangered fish in the 18-mile reach of the Colorado below the confluence. This summer the Bureau of Reclamation, in consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, other Gunnison Basin water users and the State of Colorado, “decided and agreed to lower the whitewater target down to 500 CFS.” It “isn’t certainly done lightly” Foy says: the cut preserves “nearly 500 acre-feet of storage per day” buying time against a Bureau forecast that Blue Mesa could drop below minimum power pool as early as October. Below that elevation the dam’s 86.4-megawatt plant (enough energy to supply at least 34,000 homes at full pool) — stops generating, and Foy says electrical output is already falling. Unlike Glen Canyon Dam, he is “not aware of any concerns” about operating below power pool.
