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by Adding yet another potential water distribution problem to the growing list, a recent analysis by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has concluded there is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, created in 1935 when the Hoover Dam was built, could go dry by the year 2021. Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Institute have estimated a net deficit of almost 1 million acre-feet of water per year coming from the Colorado River system; noting increased human usage and greater evaporation rates as the major causes for the depletion. Lake Mead currently supplies water by means of an aqueduct system to cities such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego and is currently at only half its capacity. It also supplies many of these cities with a fair percentage of their electricity via the hydroelectric plant operating from the Hoover Dam.
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Isostatic rebound by galton :: NR4 :: on 17 February 2008
Wild speculation here, but when the glaciers covering northern Europe retreated at the end of the last ice age, the (regions of the) tectonic plates which were relieved of their weight responded by rising relative to the surrounding areas, a phenomenon which geologists (which I am not) call "isostatic rebound". This persists today, such that the rising north of the UK is causing the never-glaciated south of the UK to lower slightly.
I would have thought that the very rapid removal of such a large volume of water as Lake Mead would result in the same effect; that is, if the geologically brief presence of Lake Mead has been adequate to cause any compression in the first place.
Googling for "isostatic rebound Lake Mead" suggests that geologists are thinking on the same lines. While economists will doubtless conclude that building the Hoover Dam lead to a great depression...