Lake Mead

Anyone up for a nice, refreshing, early-autumn swim on the Nevada side of Lake Mead? Well, steer clear of Boulder Beach, which has been infected with - ick - swimmer's itch . Rangers say that an above-normal waterfowl population may be to blame for the poison ivy-like rash that was reported by at least a dozen swimmers over the weekend. Also known as schistosome cercarial dermatitis , swimmer's itch is caused  when flatworm parasites that are found in some birds burrow into human skin and cause an allergic reaction.

Major crimes reported at LAX dropped 26.7% last year, and overall crime continues to decline, according to 2012 statistics released this week by Los Angeles Airport Police.  Robberies dropped from three in 2011 to one last year.  Two aggravated assaults were reported each year. In 2012,  there were 17 reports of burglary from locked vehicles, a decrease of 10.5% over 2011 . . . . National Park Service authorities announced they will issue permits to limit the number of Half Dome hikers to 300 a day to reduce congestion in a wilderness area and make the hike safer.

SAN DIEGO - After years of sporadic negotiations, U.S. and Mexican officials Tuesday are set to sign a major agreement aimed at improving binational cooperation over the Colorado River. Under the five-year deal, regional water agencies in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada will purchase a total of nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico's share of the Colorado River - enough to cover the needs of 200,000 families for a year. In exchange, Mexico will receive $10 million to repair damage done to its irrigation canals by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the Mexicali Valley in 2010.

A study released last week by the Bureau of Reclamation confirms what everyone already knows: We are sucking more water out of the Colorado River Basin than nature is putting in. Like draining a savings account, water users in the seven basin states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) and Mexico have been drawing down Lake Powell and Lake Mead by about a million more acre-feet of water than rain and snowmelt provide each year. According to the bureau, users' plans for yet more pipelines combined with the effects of global warming, will push the annual deficit as high as 8 million acre-feet by 2060, a cataclysmic shortfall.

Five people were killed Wednesday when a helicopter flying tourists over Nevada's Hoover Dam slammed into a mountain range that borders Lake Mead, authorities said. The aircraft crashed into the River Mountains east of Las Vegas just before 5 p.m., Andrew Munoz, a National Park Service spokesman, told The Times. The identities of the pilot and four passengers on board have not been released. Authorities reached the rugged site by helicopter -? the only way to access it -? and confirmed that no one had survived the crash, he said.

National Park Service officials in charge of the Lake Mead Recreational Area announced Wednesday that personal watercraft will continue to be allowed at the 1.5-million-acre park. The decision was prompted by a court order to ban the machines if park officials failed to devise a management plan and conduct environmental studies.

Re "Fraternity at UCLA Shut by National Board," July 10: I'm the father of Brian Toshio Sanders, the UCLA student who lost his life in his effort to save another fraternity member, Brian Thomas Pearce, at Lake Mead on May 17. Your article further saddens our hearts that have not even begun to heal. The article implies that our son Brian simply drowned at the lake, diving off a 20-foot cliff as a possible alcohol-related accident. That is incorrect. Based on the park ranger report and my discussions with rangers and other fraternity students who were at the scene of the incident, an account of what transpired is as follows: Around 7 p.m., when Pearce took a flip-and-a half dive off the cliff, he apparently landed badly and drowned.

Rainbow trout have been stocked in Lake Mead for the first time since 1983, and fishermen on hand when the truck unloaded the first batch of 3,300 had little trouble catching their limits. Another 3,000 trout--including catchables between 10 and 12 inches--are scheduled to be planted Friday in Hemenway Harbor.

Federal park officials have issued safety warnings to the more than 150,000 boaters and swimmers expected at drought-lowered Lake Mead during the Memorial Day weekend. "There are a lot more obstacles, and things that used to be obstacles are now shoreline," said Kay Rohde, the National Park Service's chief of interpretation for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. When full, the nation's largest man-made reservoir has 700 miles of shoreline.

Favorable preliminary findings are reported two months after about 20,000 gallons of fertilizer were spread over 20,000 acres of Lake Mead's Overton Arm May 30 in an effort to revive the lake's declining sport fishery. The fertilizer, ammonium polyphosphate, was meant to enhance the phosphate level, which dropped largely because of federal clean-water regulations imposed in the late 1970s at the Clark County waste water treatment plant in Las Vegas.

SAN DIEGO - After years of sporadic negotiations, U.S. and Mexican officials Tuesday are set to sign a major agreement aimed at improving binational cooperation over the Colorado River. Under the five-year deal, regional water agencies in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada will purchase a total of nearly 100,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico's share of the Colorado River - enough to cover the needs of 200,000 families for a year. In exchange, Mexico will receive $10 million to repair damage done to its irrigation canals by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the Mexicali Valley in 2010.

Anyone up for a nice, refreshing, early-autumn swim on the Nevada side of Lake Mead? Well, steer clear of Boulder Beach, which has been infected with - ick - swimmer's itch . Rangers say that an above-normal waterfowl population may be to blame for the poison ivy-like rash that was reported by at least a dozen swimmers over the weekend. Also known as schistosome cercarial dermatitis , swimmer's itch is caused  when flatworm parasites that are found in some birds burrow into human skin and cause an allergic reaction.

Southern Californians are used to turning on the tap, or the sprinklers, and getting the water they want. Their ability to do so depends, in large part, on the Colorado River and the reservoir it feeds, Lake Mead. In 2008, Tim Barnett and David Pierce, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote that the lake — a lifeline not just for Southern California but for much of the desert Southwest — would soon teeter at the brink of failure. The Review-Journal in Las Vegas, a city especially dependent on that lifeline, responded with predictable bluster: "We'd love to buy some action on the odds provided by Mr. Barnett and Mr. Pierce.

Five people were killed Wednesday when a helicopter flying tourists over Nevada's Hoover Dam slammed into a mountain range that borders Lake Mead, authorities said. The aircraft crashed into the River Mountains east of Las Vegas just before 5 p.m., Andrew Munoz, a National Park Service spokesman, told The Times. The identities of the pilot and four passengers on board have not been released. Authorities reached the rugged site by helicopter -? the only way to access it -? and confirmed that no one had survived the crash, he said.

Reporting from Page, Ariz. It was another morning of chasing the water at Lake Powell. Jeff Wilson strained to adjust a floating dock to keep up with the swiftly rising level of one of the nation's biggest reservoirs. This was supposed to be yet another dry year on the Colorado River system, which feeds Lake Powell and sustains more than 25 million people and upward of 3 million acres of farmland. Some Western states even feared cuts in water deliveries were looming. Instead, so much snowmelt and storm runoff flowed into the river and its tributaries that for much of the summer Powell rose a foot a day. The reservoir now is 76% full, and its surface has reached the highest point in a decade, dramatically shrinking the white bathtub ring of mineral salts that had ominously marked the lake's retreat.

The most striking sight greeting visitors to the Colorado River gorge known as Black Canyon used to be the great wedge of alabaster concrete spanning the canyon wall to wall. But in recent years Hoover Dam, that enduring symbol of mankind's ingenuity, has been upstaged by another sight signifying nature's power to resist even the most determined effort to bring it under control: a broad white band stretching along the edge of Lake Mead like a bathtub ring, marking how far the reservoir has fallen below its maximum level.

The National Park Service is drafting a plan to protect cultural resources submerged in Lake Mead and public access to them. Because of drought, some sites swallowed when Hoover Dam was constructed are now in shallow water.

The recent discovery of a destructive, exotic mussel in Lake Mead has put California officials on high alert for the invader, which can cause millions of dollars worth of damage to water pipes and foul aquatic ecosystems. The Jan. 6 find of quagga mussels in Lake Mead signals its western arrival, an event that wildlife and water officials have been trying to avert. "This is the first infestation in the West.

The West's great reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, could run dry by 2021 without a drastic change in water consumption, according to an analysis released Tuesday. The two reservoirs, which now contain 25 million acre-feet of water, are losing about 1 million acre-feet a year as a result of rising demand and persistent drought. The study, to be published in the journal Water Resources Research, analyzed how global warming is likely to increase the strain on the Colorado River.

The recent discovery of a destructive, exotic mussel in Lake Mead has put California officials on high alert for the invader, which can cause millions of dollars worth of damage to water pipes and foul aquatic ecosystems. The Jan. 6 find of quagga mussels in Lake Mead signals its western arrival, an event that wildlife and water officials have been trying to avert. "This is the first infestation in the West.