Drought-starved Lake Mead reveals a decades-old barrel with a body inside

A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the the newly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest US reservoirs – and officials predicted the discovery could be just the first of more grim finds.

“I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Lt Ray Spencer of Las Vegas police told KLAS-TV on Monday.

The drought-stricken lake’s level has dropped so much that a water intake became visible last week. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead.

Authorities are still working to identify the body, but police said on Tuesday that the remains belonged to a man who had been shot decades ago.

The killing probably happened between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s because the victim was wearing shoes that were manufactured during that period, said Spencer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Police plan to contact experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to analyze when the barrel started eroding. The Clark county coroner’s office will try to determine the person’s identity.

Boaters spotted the barrel on Sunday afternoon. National Park Service rangers searched an area near the lake’s Hemenway Harbor and found the barrel containing skeletal remains.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the US, part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

source: theguardian.com