There’s another water crisis happening in the Colorado River Basin — and this one’s invisib…

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There’s another water crisis happening in the Colorado River Basin — and this one’s invisible

The United States’ two largest reservoirs have dropped to unprecedented lows this year as drought grips the Southwest, but below the ground there’s another water crisis playing out — one that’s much less visible, but no less alarming.

The amount of groundwater in the Colorado River Basin is declining rapidly, and it’s doing so in unexpected ways, according to a new study from scientists at Virginia Tech, published in the journal Water Resources Research.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are the visible faces of the Southwest’s critical water problem, as the Colorado River — which supplies water to nearly 40 million people — shrinks due to a combination of climate change and human demand.

Colorado River Basin lost trillions of gallons of groundwater during recent severe drought, study finds

The Colorado River's shrinking reservoirs have become a familiar sign of the West's water challenges. But a new study finds groundwater that helps sustain the river system is also disappearing.

Researchers at Virginia Tech found the Upper Colorado River Basin lost an estimated 4.6 trillion gallons of groundwater during a severe three-year drought from 2020 to 2022. That's enough water to halfway fill Lake Powell, stretched along the Utah-Arizona border.

The losses were greater than those in the drier Lower Basin, according to thestudy published in Water Resources Research.

"In the Mountain West, groundwater is an important source of supply," said Esther Oyedele, who led the study. "So our study has been able to show that groundwater cannot simply just be treated as an unlimited backup anymore."

Colorado River is losing groundwater where scientists least expected

Colorado River groundwater fell fastest in the snowy upper basin during the 2020 to 2022 drought, nearly double the loss in the desert below.

When the Colorado River runs short, attention usually turns to Lake Mead, where a pale ring along the shoreline reveals how far the water has fallen.

The mountain half of the river, where the snow falls and the water starts, is supposed to be the safe half.

During the drought of 2020 to 2022, the Colorado River’s upper basin lost nearly twice as much groundwater as the desert half did.

Esther Oyedele and Susanna Werth of Virginia Tech, with a colleague at Indiana University, measured the loss with NASA satellites that weigh the water in the ground from orbit.

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