It's a hot spot to cool off this holiday weekend but beyond the boats and jet skis, there's another side to Lake Pleasant you may not know about.
“It's a beautifully orchestrated system that allows us all to use water for many different reasons,” said Jennifer Brown, a Central Arizona Project Director.
“We know we’re in a desert and we know when we wake up in the morning and we need a hot shower, it’s going to be on -- but most people don’t understand how that works," she said.
Lake Pleasant, along with lakes Mead and Powell, serve as reservoirs for the Central Arizona Project system that provides at least some water to 80 percent of people in the state.
Billions of gallons of water are pumped from Lake Havasu and travel 150 miles to the lake where it's stored during winter and released during summer, spanning over more than 300 miles of canal.
"It's a very amazing system that took about $4 billion to build," Brown said.
This weekend water at the lake will be about fifty feet lower than Memorial Day. It happens that way by design, Brown said, adding that water is a "precious" resource that should be respected in the desert.
"We need to appreciate the goodness and the value that water brings," she said.
