DELICATE WATER ZONE · D2 — Severe drought over a member dam
Scottsdale and the Phoenix valley, Arizona
The Central Arizona Project lifts Colorado River water out of Lake Havasu and carries it 336 miles uphill to the valley — and CAP holds junior priority, so federal shortage tiers declared off Lake Mead's elevation cut Arizona first. Scottsdale leans on CAP more than its neighbors and shut hauled water to the Rio Verde Foothills in 2023 when its drought stages triggered.
What this desk cannot see: Roughly half the valley's surface water is Salt River Project water from Theodore Roosevelt Lake and its chain — SRP publishes no open telemetry this desk can verify, so that half is a named gap here, not a number.
The reservoirs this zone drinks from
| Reservoir | % full | Storage | Elevation | 30-day trend | Drought at the dam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Havasu CA–AZ | — | 571,100 af | 447.5 ft | -155 af/day | D1 — Moderate drought |
| Lake Mead NV–AZ | 26.4% | 6.90M af | 1,038.8 ft | -5,116 af/day | D1 — Moderate drought |
| Lake Powell AZ–UT | 20.4% | 5.14M af | 3,517.8 ft | -8,269 af/day | D2 — Severe drought |
af = acre-feet; a dash means the measure is not published for that reservoir. Each name links to the reservoir's full page — gauge, record, snowpack and sources.
Zone prose is curated by this desk with its sourcing inline; the numbers are the member reservoirs' own operators', on the bases named on each reservoir's page. Back to the national desk.