The Latest Breaking News from Lake Mead

Reservoir last reached full capacity in 1999

Senate Democrats to introduce pot decriminalization bill against odds

An abandoned old power boat juts upright from the cracked mud like a giant tombstone. Its epitaph might read: Here lay the waters of Lake Mead.

LOS ANGELES — In recent months, falling water levels at Lake Mead have revealed multiple bodies, including the skeletal remains of a probable homicide victim found in a barrel, and sunken pleasure boats.

Millions of gallons of Colorado River water hurtle through the Hoover Dam every day, generating electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes.

The sun began to set but the temperature hovered around 106 degrees. I was there to document one of the latest objects to emerge from Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, serving the needs of some 20 million people in the Desert Southwest.

With the Colorado River’s depleted reservoirs continuing to drop to new lows, the federal government has taken the unprecedented step of telling the seven Western states that rely on the river to find ways of drastically cutting the amount of water they take in the next two months.

LOS ANGELES — As the West endures another year of unrelenting drought worsened by climate change, the Colorado River’s reservoirs have declined so low that major water cuts will be necessary next year to reduce risks of supplies reaching perilously low levels, a top federal water official said Tuesday.

Water not actually lake, however