Boaters pass near the Boulder Islands in Nevada’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Last week, North America’s largest reservoir dropped below 1,082-feet-above sea level, the lowest it has been since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s. A 14-year drought in the Southwestern United States and a dwindling supply of water from the Colorado River, in part due to cuts in the reservoir’s annual allocation of water from Lake Powell, has left a white “bathtub ring” of mineral deposits left by higher water levels on the rocks around the lake as high as 130 feet. |
