Lake Powell

Lake Powell is a man-made reservoir on the Colorado River, straddling the border between Utah and Arizona. It was created by the flooding of Glen Canyon by the controversial Glen Canyon Dam, which also led to the creation of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a popular summer destination. The reservoir is named for explorer John Wesley Powell, a one-armed American Civil War veteran who explored the river via three wooden boats in 1869. In 1972, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was established. It is public land managed by the National Park Service, and available to the public for recreational purposes. Lake Powell is arguably one of the most scenic reservoirs in America, situated in some of Southern Utah's finest red-rock desert country. It is second in size only to Lake Mead downstream.

With each lake storing about 25,000,000 acre-feet (31 km³) of water when full, the water is a valuable but extremely costly resource for Southern California. In 2007, these reservoirs are far below full and at risk of further decline due to prolonged drought in the region. Lake Powell loses 2% to 3% of its water yearly to evaporation, while Lake Mead downstream loses 5% to 6%, in addition to other losses such as seepage.

Lake Powell is a storage facility for the Upper Basin states of the Colorado River Compact (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico). The Compact specifies that the Upper Basin states are to provide a minimum annual flow of 8.23 million acre feet to the Lower Basin states (Arizona, Nevada, and California). This agreed-upon flow is greater than the actual average flow of the Colorado Rivercitation needed], further exacerbating the reservoir's filling problems.