As drought depletes one of the country’s major reservoirs, a body was discovered inside a barrel on the freshly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead over the weekend, and experts said the finding may be the first of many such dismal finds.
The lake level has plummeted so low at drought-stricken Lake Mead that the topmost water intake was visible last week. Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also spans into Arizona, since the reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has grown low.
Personal things discovered within the barrel showed the individual died in the 1980s, according to Spencer.
He declined to comment on the cause of death or the goods discovered, citing the continuing inquiry.
Police intend to consult specialists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to determine when the barrel began to corrode. The coroner’s office in Clark County will attempt to identify the person.
The barrel was discovered by boaters on Sunday afternoon. Rangers from the National Park Service discovered the barrel containing skeleton remains near the lake’s Hemenway Harbor.
The biggest man-made lakes in the United States, Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream, are part of a system that supplies water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture, and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Mexico.
