Shrinking levels of Lake Powell on Friday prompted the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to announce a series of releases from reservoirs that feed the lake/Kurt Repanshek file

An ongoing series of releases from three reservoirs that feed water into Lake Powell at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area are planned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agency said Friday.

The staged releases from Flaming Gorge in Wyoming, Blue Mesa in Curecanti National Recreation Area in Colorado, and Navajo in New Mexico are needed because in-flows to Lake Powell were down 2.5 million acre-feet between January and July, a BuRec release said.

Flaming Gorge's releases flow into the Green River and then the Colorado River, those from Blue Mesa feed the Gunnison River, which runs into the Colorado River, while the Navajo Reservoir feeds the San Juan River that runs into Lake Powell.

"The current forecast for (water year) 2021 is 3.23 (million acre feet)," or 30 percent of average, the release added.

Also on Friday, the National Park Service at Glen Canyon announced that work was beginning to extend boat ramps at the Wahweap and Bullfrog marinas on Lake Powell due to declining lake levels.

Five-year projections released by BuRec last week predicted a 79 percent chance that Lake Powell would fall below the Drought Response Operations Agreement target elevation of 3,525 feet within the next year. That target elevation provides a 35 vertical-foot buffer designed to minimize the risk of dropping below the minimum power pool elevation of 3,490 feet, and balances the need to protect the infrastructure at Glen Canyon Dam and meet current operational obligations to the Lower Basin States of Arizona, California and Nevada.

On Thursday the lake's elevation was at 3,556.97 feet.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Friday announced a scheduled series of releases from reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell/BuRec

The scheduled upstream reservoir releases were expected to bring an additional 181,000 acre-feet of water into Lake Powell by year-end.

"The additional delivery of 181 (acre feet) is expected to raise Lake Powell’s elevation by approximately three feet," BuRec said. "The additional releases from the upstream initial units do not change the annual volume of water released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead in (water year) 2021, as those volumes are determined by the 2007 Interim Guidelines."