The water levels in the vital Colorado River appear to be so low at points that people can walk across it, a new report reveals
Ryan Deters told local outlet Fox 5 that he used a drone to film himself walking from one side of the Colorado River to the other. Deters was able to see — and touch — the river’s bottom across its entire width, he told the outlet.
The major river supplies water to seven western U.S. states, but environmental experts have warned that the ongoing climate crisis is threatening the crucial waterway.
The footage, shared with Fox 5, shows Deters in a wetsuit top wading through the river, which only appeared to come up to his chest. The deepest point was about four and a half to five feet, he explained.
Deters, who made the walk earlier this month, told Fox 5 it was the lowest water level he’d ever seen in the river.
“I’m in it all the time, so I kind of know the depths at each height of the units,” Deters told Fox 5. “There’s a little bit of current… but I know that river so well and with the eddies, I could always swim back in whatever, so I wasn’t too afraid of that.”
In the summer, the river is usually six to 10 feet deeper, depending on how much water is released by the nearby Davis Dam in Arizona, Deters said.
Officials are growing more and more concerned about low water levels in the Colorado River, which recently saw one of its driest years in decades, CalMatters reported in August. Experts are particularly concerned about losses in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are the largest reservoirs in the country.
Benjamin Bass, a researcher for the University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Climate Science, told CalMatters there is “a risk of these reservoirs dipping into lower water levels that can make them inoperable.”
A series of essays released this week by a group of scientists studying the Colorado River also indicates that climate change is driving lower rainfall, which in turn depletes the river, The Colorado Sun reports.
As a result, these scientists are warning the future of the Colorado River could be in jeopardy. Doug Kenney, chair of the Colorado River Research Group, told The Colorado Sun that the basin is “out of time, the crisis is no longer theoretical.”
