Emergency Drawdown at Flaming Gorge Hits Its Recreation Economy

As campers with boats flocked to Buckboard Marina at the start of Memorial Day weekend, Tony Valdez was busy issuing refunds and repairing broken boat ramps. One older Green River man, who walked with two canes, left with his money refunded for the season after discovering he could not safely make it down to the boat slip. Due to dropping water levels at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the ramp is now buckled, angling up and down like a pitched roof.

“It’s devastating, not just to me, it’s all the marina owners,” said Valdez, who owns Buckboard Marina, south of Green River. “It’s a big loss, and this is a big loss to the community.”

Along the cliffs and shoreline, darker and lighter lines of rock and sand trace the water’s elevations, showing where the water hits when the marina is full, where it hovered this spring and where it dropped after an initial “flush.” Valdez estimates the reservoir has dropped by 7 feet since April.

But that’s not the worst of it. Valdez anticipates that by the end of this summer, the reservoir will be as low as it’s ever been.

Why the Drain?

For all its charm as a beloved recreation spot and its utility as a local economic driver, Flaming Gorge Reservoir owes its existence to a legal compact that essentially regards it as an insurance policy in times of drought.

Its primary purpose, according to federal officials and Colorado River Compact scholars , is to serve as a backup water bank to help maintain the Colorado River system. Specifically, Flaming Gorge and a handful of other reservoirs in the upper Colorado River Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico are key to ensuring a minimum flow of 7.5 million acre-feet of water, on a running 10-year average, at Lees Ferry just downstream of Lake Powell, a massive man-made reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border.

Today, after more than 20 years of drought intensified by human-caused climate change, the Colorado River is in crisis, putting at risk massive agricultural irrigation operations that consume about 80 percent of its water. This past winter saw historically low snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin—a primary source for the river’s flow.

This annotated 1963 photo of the Glen Canyon Dam shows the minimum level of Lake Powell, below which would render the dam’s power generation components inoperable. (Bureau of Reclamation)

Combined with record heat in March, Lake Powell is at risk of dropping below Glen Canyon Dam’s “minimum power pool,” the point at which it can no longer produce hydroelectric power, according to water officials. If it falls even lower, the dam, which holds back Lake Powell, could be at risk of structural damage or unable to allow water to flow downstream.

The situation triggered a drought response operations agreement that calls for restricting releases from Lake Powell and an order to draw extra water from Flaming Gorge upstream. In total, water managers will release about 1 million additional acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge in April 2026 through April 2027.

“These actions are expected to lower [Flaming Gorge’s] elevation by roughly 35 feet over the next year to approximately 59 percent of capacity,” the bureau said in April .

“The elevations are real critical,” Valdez said. At Buckboard Marina, high water has hovered between 6,030 and 6,040 feet above sea level over the past 50 years, he said. Dropping 35 feet could expose 400 feet of shoreline in some places, including marinas with boat ramps, he said.

Dropping water levels in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir by 35 feet could expose over 400 feet of shoreline in some places, including marinas with boat ramps, according to Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez. (Hannah Romero/Green River Star)

If the water elevation continues to retreat, it could reach a point where boats can’t be brought in or out.

“By September, this thing is going to be down to 6,000 feet. That’s it,” Valdez said. “Next year, if it goes below that, there’s no more marina here.”

Setting a Course

Water managers set a course in April to “stabilize” Flaming Gorge’s outflow to about 1,100 cubic feet per second, representing the rate needed to achieve the 1 million acre-feet of extra water release, according to the bureau . On top of that, there are two previously planned “flushes” from the Gorge. The first, in early May, temporarily increased the outflow to about 8,600 cubic feet per second to enhance the proliferation of razorback sucker larvae , and a second 72-hour flush beginning June 8 will temporarily increase the outflow to about 4,600 cubic feet per second to discourage the proliferation of smallmouth bass.

So far, Flaming Gorge has dropped from about 3 million acre-feet in April (or 82 percent capacity) to about 2.83 million acre-feet as of May 25. Meanwhile, water managers warn, “This release plan is subject to change depending on evolving river conditions and weather forecasts.”

Those evolving conditions include forecasted versus actual flows f…