Current Live Storage
in the Basin

The Colorado River Basin (Basin) supplies drinking water to 40 million people and supports over 5 million acres of irrigated agriculture whose products feed communities across the nation and worldwide. The Basin includes seven states, two countries, 30 federally recognized Tribes, and 11 national parks. While supporting $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity and 16 million jobs across the western U.S., the River also underpins world-class recreational resources and gives life to vibrant ecosystems in the heart of the American West. Storage reservoirs (units) are critical to the continued operation and management of the Colorado River system. The Bureau of Reclamation owns and operates a series of Colorado River units up and down the Basin.

The primary storage reservoirs in the Basin include: Flaming Gorge in Wyoming and Utah; the Aspinall Unit in Colorado - Crystal Reservoir, Blue Mesa Reservoir, and Morrow Point Reservoir; Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico; Lake Powell in Utah; Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona; and Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu on the border of Arizona and California.

When these reservoirs are full, there is 59.6 million acre-feet (MAF) of storage in the Basin. Over the last 23 years, however, the Basin has faced extreme drought and experienced continual decline in live storage volumes. Prolonged overuse exacerbated by declining runoff as a result of drought exacerbated by climate change has significantly drained the water reserves leaving the Basin on the precipice of losing the ability to rely on the reservoir storage supplies to sustain uses within the Basin.

The Tracker provides a simulation of real-time updates from Colorado River system storage. All data is reported as live storage which is the amount of total reservoir capacity from which water can be withdrawn by gravity. This capacity is equal to the total capacity less the dead pool and flood control capacities. Dead pool is the storage volume in a reservoir that cannot be drained by gravity through a dam's outlet works, spillway, or power plant intake structures and can only be pumped out. Flood control capacity is space within a reservoir reserved specifically to absorb flood inflows to reduce downstream flood risk.