It was ten years ago when I first visited one of the biggest reservoirs in the eastern region of the world: Shihmen Reservoir, in Taoyuan, Taiwan. But it was around ten years later that we went to visit the reservoir again, only to be met with dismay at the horrible sight in front of us. All the water had been drained down to its very core. The once grand and esteemed reservoir was now a thin, shallow, stream. Where there had been dark blue water almost as high as a seven-story building was now just a concrete tank filled with nothing more but a puddle.
It seems to be a similar case for Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States and one of the two major reservoirs on the stem of the Colorado River. What once was a beautiful sight of rich and deep water is drained as of 20 years later – its color withdrew from navy to teal, its span shriveled down to nothing wider than that of a starving snake.
In the words of Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director for the National Audubon Society, “These reservoirs were stunningly full 20 years ago, [but now it] finds itself perilously close to a Day Zero situation.” It could be said that the fear of the lake drying out is justified by the deterioration of the situation as the lake’s beauty is stripped off with the passing of time. Once a sight for sore eyes is now nothing more than a sight of sore eyes.
It is also important to understand just how much value this lake holds. As the biggest reservoir in the U.S., more than 25 million citizens throughout at least seven states rely on it as their source of water, thus increasing the number of people this crisis negatively affects. In fact, the condition is so dire and critical that the federal government has taken measures to divulge its state of water shortage and propose emergency requests as a way to preserve the water it currently contains.
Regarding the cause of this issue, researchers have pointed their fingers towards the rise of global warming and climate change generated by human activity itself, in which people’s senseless and destructive actions that caused harm to the environment have led to the rise of temperature in our Earth today. If the issue is not resolved immediately, it may put millions at risk of water shortage and lead ecosystems into a state of drought. We must try our best to preserve not just Lake Mead, but also all the bodies of water next to us—not just for ourselves, but also for many future generations to come.
Work Cited
Choi-schagrin, Winston. “See How Far Water Levels in Lake Mead Have Fallen.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 July 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/climate/lake-mead-level-pictures.html.
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