Hoover Dam to get new turbines, repairs with $52 million in federal funds

Lake Mead is shown from the Hoover Dam successful Boulder City, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Photo by: Wade Vandervort

The Bureau of Reclamation is releasing $52 cardinal to money upgrades and repairs astatine the Hoover Dam, officials announced today. 

The wealth volition enactment operations, attraction and caller turbines engineered to make hydroelectric powerfulness astatine the little h2o levels brought connected by prolonged drought.

The funds travel arsenic officials pass that Lake Mead could driblet to historical lows wrong 2 years — a imaginable that has raised alarm implicit hydropower supplies for utilities crossed Arizona, California and Nevada.

“Hoover Dam is 1 of the astir important vigor and h2o infrastructure assets successful the American West, and these funds volition assistance guarantee it continues delivering reliable, affordable powerfulness for Nevada and the Southwest for years to come,” Gov. Joe Lombardo said successful a statement. “... As drought conditions and h2o uncertainty proceed to situation the Colorado River Basin, investing successful the semipermanent reliability and resilience of Hoover Dam is much important than ever.” 

The wealth had been earmarked from status benefits for workers of the Western Area Power Administration, 1 of the nation’s largest utilities agencies delivering cleanable energy. That programme was funded elsewhere, but “federal reddish portion and authorities inefficiency” led to that wealth being mostly inaccessible for years, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said.

Cortez Masto successful 2024 introduced the Help Hoover Dam Act calling for the merchandise of the funds. Companion authorities was introduced U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., successful the House. It was signed into instrumentality earlier this year.

“For decades, millions of national dollars person been sitting unused portion the Hoover Dam is successful request of upgrades and repairs,” Cortez Masto said successful a statement. “My caller instrumentality has solved that bureaucratic dead-end. Now we tin enactment those dollars to enactment improving the Hoover Dam, protecting the h2o and vigor proviso for implicit a cardinal Americans.” 

The Bureau of Reclamation testified successful enactment of the legislation, estimating that implicit $200 cardinal would beryllium needed to put successful regular cognition and attraction of the dam by 2035 – erstwhile it turns 100. 

The Colorado River provides h2o for astir 40 cardinal people, and 1.3 cardinal radical get energy done hydropower produced astatine the Hoover Dam. 

In April, the Bureau of Reclamation made a decision to trim flows retired of Lake Powell successful an effort to support h2o travel contempt the Colorado River seeing its worst runoff play connected record. 

Long-term drought has reduced Colorado River strategy retention to astir 36% of capacity, with conditions intensified from the lowest snowpack recorded successful past and record-breaking March heat, the bureau said. 

U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum met with governors from the 7 basin states, including Nevada, to sermon hydrology and aboriginal cognition plans. The effect was to determination h2o from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream and trim releases from Lake Powell, which was forecasted to diminution beneath 3,490 feet – the minimum powerfulness excavation level — by August without immoderate intervention. 

If Lake Mead’s h2o elevation falls beneath 1,035 feet, Hoover Dam’s vigor procreation capableness is reduced from astir 1,300 megawatts to lone astir 375 megawatts, Lombardo said. Older turbines, similar the existent ones astatine Hoover Dam, cannot make powerfulness beneath that 1,035-foot limit. 

Nevada leaders did not specify each of the projects oregon upgrades the backing would beryllium directed towards but noted immoderate could beryllium utilized to instal turbines needed to make hydroelectric powerfulness astatine little water depths. 

The wide caput turbines would let for continued procreation astatine little reservoir levels, and aboriginal estimates believed the outgo would beryllium determination betwixt $8 and $13 cardinal per turbine. 

In December, Lombardo sent a missive to the Department of the Interior urging the bureau to “direct your unit to prosecute promptly and collaboratively with the Hoover hydropower contractors, impacted states, and Congress to place originative solutions to resoluteness this issue.” 

He stressed that “a wide decision” connected the assorted solutions projected to allocate enactment “would let captious upgrades to determination guardant without hold truthful Hoover Dam grid reliability, agrarian electrical affordability, and the broader determination system stay secure.”