A body was dumped in a Nevada lake. Drought uncovered it 40 years later, officials say

The country’s largest reservoir is shrinking — and it’s uncovering what’s under the surface.

A body in a barrel was found in Nevada’s Lake Mead on Sunday, May 1, according to the National Park Service.

Boaters discovered the crumbling barrel at about 3 p.m. after hearing a woman scream from the side of the beach, according to KLAS. They realized a body was inside.

Police suspect the body had been dumped in the lake in the 1970s or 1980s and was only uncovered by drought. The body had a gunshot wound, and authorities believe the death could have been a homicide, according to the National Park Service.

It was found in an area that would have been about 100 feet underwater and hundreds of yards from shore decades ago, FOX 5 reported.

“The water level has dropped so much over the last 30 to 40 years that, where the person was located, if a person were to drop the barrel in the water and it sinks, you are never going to find it unless the water level drops,” Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told the Review-Journal. “The water level has dropped and made the barrel visible.”

Spencer told the news outlet the barrel didn’t move. It didn’t wash up on shore from waves or a strong tide.

It could be the first of many human remains the drought uncovers, officials told FOX 5.

“I think anybody can understand there are probably more bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead,” Spencer told KLAS. “It’s just a matter of, are we able to recover those?”

Police are now investigating the remains found in the barrel. They will begin looking through missing person cases dating back to the 1980s, according to FOX 5.

“There are some items we recovered that we will look through missing person cases to see if there’s even a potential,” Spencer told FOX 5. “Granted it’s a needle in a haystack, but right now we have nothing to go on.”

Low water levels at Lake Mead

Lake Mead is the country’s largest reservoir, according to the National Park Service. It was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s and includes more than 750 miles of shoreline.

The reservoir supplies water to more than 40 million people in seven states and Mexico, according to NASA. It provides water to people in some of the largest cities in the U.S., including San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

In recent years, however, it’s been shrinking due to a 22-year megadrought.

The lake gets about 10% of its water from local precipitation and groundwater, and the rest comes from snow melt in the Rocky Mountains. During the drought, the lake isn’t getting refilled as it historically had.

In July 2021, Lake Mead had a water elevation of about 1,068 feet above sea level. It was the lowest recorded level since April 1937, which was when the lake was still being filled, NASA reported.

The water level has quickly gone down in the past several years. In the same month in 2000, the lake’s water levels were at nearly 1,200 feet.

Currently, the Lake Mead reservoir is only at 35% of its capacity, according to NASA. The Bureau of Reclamation said water allocations will be cut over the next year, and in some cases it will be reduced by enough water for hundreds of thousands of households.

“At maximum capacity, Lake Mead reaches an elevation 1,220 feet (372 meters) near the dam and would hold 9.3 trillion gallons (36 trillion liters) of water,” experts at NASA said. “The lake last approached full capacity in the summers of 1983 and 1999. It has been dropping ever since.”

This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 11:41 AM with the headline "A body was dumped in a Nevada lake. Drought uncovered it 40 years later, officials say."