A fourth set of human remains has been discovered at Lake Mead, as the nation’s largest reservoir continues to diminish amid a historic drought.
The remains were discovered at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on Saturday, the National Park Service said in a statement.
Park rangers retrieved the remains with the help of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s dive team
Water levels at Lake Mead have become dangerously low, and may even hit ‘dead pool’ status, meaning the water is too low to flow downstream.
Saturday morning’s discovery marks the fourth time since May where human remains were discovered along the lake’s receding shoreline.
The first remains were found inside a barrel on May 1. Investigators believe the person whose body was uncovered was a murder victim who died of a gunshot wound in either the 1970s or 1980s, due to the clothing on the body.
A second set of human skeletal remains were discovered days later in Callville Bay within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
On July 25, a third set of remains were reported at Swim Beach as water levels at the lake, which sits between Nevada and Arizona, have hit historic lows as the western portion of the country experiences a severe drought.
In June, Lake Mead’s surface elevation was measured at 1,044.03 feet, which is the lowest its been since the lake was filled in the 1930s. In July, that number was then beat when water levels dropped to 1,040.92 feet.
The Clark County Medical Examiner has been contacted to identify the remains and determine the cause of death in all of the cases, though the investigations are ongoing.
Satellite images recently released by NASA show how the lake, which supplies water from the Colorado River to 25million people, has drastically receded.
‘The largest reservoir in the United States supplies water to millions of people across seven states, tribal lands, and northern Mexico. It now also provides a stark illustration of climate change and a long-term drought that may be the worst in the U.S. West in 12 centuries,’ NASA said.
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