Skyrocketing costs for urban users of what little water and power is still available could cause mass migrational population shifts. Real estate values could plummet. The “dead pool” of Lake Mead could transform parts of the Southwest into “dead zones.”
An acre-foot provides approximately enough water for two Las Vegas homes for 16 months. The water shortage declaration cut our allotment by 21,000 acre-feet. That does sound like a crisis, but it's not the whole story.
More skeletal remains – the fifth so far this year – were found in Lake Mead as water levels deteriorate, the National Parks Service said Tuesday.
Rangers discovered the remains near the Swim Beach area of the lake, which sits between Nevada and Arizona, on Monday night, and are still working to recover them, according to the parks service.
Multiple sets of human remains, dozens of sunken boats, trash, and baby strollers have been found on the edge of the lake this summer as water levels sit at their lowest since the reservoir was first filled.
On May 1, a barrel containing human remains that police said was probably dumped in the 1970s or 1980s was found near Hemenway Harbor, and more remains were discovered on the shoreline by paddleboarders a week later. Partial human remains were found in the Boulder Beach area on July 25.
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The fourth skeletal remains were found at Swim Beach on Aug. 7, in the same area where the most recent set was discovered.
Tuesday's announcement comes as federal officials announced Arizona and Nevada will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River amid a severe and enduring drought. Lake Mead is the country’s largest man-made reservoir that serves as a vital source of water for the Colorado River.
Lake Mead's water level has plummeted to less than a quarter full and is inching dangerously close to a point where not enough water would flow to produce hydroelectric power at the Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border.
Another set of human remains were discovered this week at Lake Mead, the enormous and once-abundant reservoir at the border of Nevada and Arizona where water levels have plummeted amid an ongoing drought in the western U.S.
Authorities responded to a new report of human skeletal remains found in a portion of Lake Mead Recreational Area called Swim Beach, which is a tourist destination located in the reservoir's boulder basin area about 30 miles outside of Las Vegas.
Swim Beach, sometimes referred to as Boulder Swim Beach, is one of Lake Mead's popular tourist destinations. Human remains have been discovered there multiple times since the spring, with the most recent instance occurring just over a week ago. At the time, said human bones found in the lake's Swim Beach section could have belonged to another set of skeletal remains discovered at the end of July.
The latest discovery marked the fifth time that skeletal remains have surfaced at Lake Mead since early May. Park rangers responded to the new report around 8 p.m. local time on Monday evening, and subsequently placed a barrier around the Swim Beach area as officials surveyed it for additional findings.
Amid an intense drought stretching for more than two decades, the Colorado River basin's water supply is rapidly declining, and worrisome projections continue to show Lake Mead plummeting toward “dead pool” status — when a reservoir isn't high enough to release water downstream through a dam.
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