Dismal runoff led to a precipitous drop in water levels at Lake Powell this summer, forcing the National Park Service to close boat ramps and move docks into deeper waters.

If this coming winter’s snowpack proves as poor as the last, Lake Powell and the entire Colorado River system that 40 million people rely upon could reach a dangerous low point, according to a recent paper analyzing the river system’s storage and overall use.

“The system is going to get highly constrained in the future,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University and co-author of the paper.

In the paper, Schmidt and other experts at universities across the Southwest called for immediate action to reduce consumption of water across the Colorado River Basin. They f

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