The Colorado Belle, an iconic hotel-casino on the Colorado River in Laughlin, will stay closed for the foreseeable future and lay off its 400 workers. (Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Lake-loving residents of Meadview, Arizona, won’t be losing their boat launch ramp at Lake Mead after all. The National Park Service plans to build a new, low-water ramp at South Cove by 2020, if not sooner. The new South Cove ramp has been in the park’s plans since 2005, with money set aside for the work. The only other ramp close to Meadview is at Pearce Ferry, but boats can’t use it because of rapids downstream.
Even after 81 years, myths still cling to Hoover Dam. No workers are entombed in the concrete and the hardhat was not invented there. But one story about the project is absolutely true. On Dec. 20, 1921, a surveying crew got caught in a flash flood and John Gregory Tierney was lost forever in the raging Colorado River, one of the first casualties of the project. Then on Dec. 20, 1935, 14 years later to the day, the job site suffered its last fatal accident A worker fell to his death from one of the two intake towers. That man was Patrick William Tierney, J.G. Tierney’s only son. Their names appear in raised metal on a plaque near the dam, never to be forgotten.
A new forecast for the Colorado River says the outlook for the coming year is bleak. The National Weather Service predicts the river will flow at about 54% of its average volume from April to July. That’s when the river usually swells with snowmelt from the Rockies and other ranges, but precipitation this winter has been well below normal across the region. There’s still plenty of time for conditions to improve. The river basin tends to accumulate much of its snowpack in January, February and March. Lake Mead ended 2017 almost 2 feet higher than a year ago, as use of Colorado River water by Nevada, Arizona and California hit its lowest level since 1992. The lake can use all the help it can get. Its surface has dropped more than 130 feet since drought started in 2000. Projections for the lake are almost certain to get worse.