guardian | Residents near a northern California lake are left with nothing but the rotting carcasses of dead fish after the reservoir mysteriously lost all its water overnight.
The Mountain Meadow reservoir, also known as Walker Lake, was a popular spot for fishing before its 5,800 acres dried up the weekend of September 12.
Now thousands of fish are dead and those used to relaxing near the water near the city of Susanville face a putrid stench.
''It's amazing how many people have come out to see the destruction,' local Eddy Bauer, 56, said. 'My wife, for instance, was holding her nose, can't even stand the smell'.
Water rights to the lake are owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which says that no one opened up the dam holding back the reservoir and the water simply ran out.
'It’s the situation we worked hard to avoid but the reality is we’re in a very serious drought, there’s also concerns for the fish downstream,' PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said.
He told KTVN that the company stopped using water from the reservoir in March after deciding that there was not enough left for 2015.
With PG&E saying that it didn't open the dam to downstream, it remains uncertain how the water left the lake, where people had been fishing a day before it went dry.
Bauer said he estimated that there were two weeks worth of water left right before it drained.
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