Possible Clues:

• Small body of water, and reducing in size?
• Body of water also deficient in region
• Lake that's divided as expanse has contracted
• Polluted Asian lake
• Kazakh-Uzbek border lake
• Artist joins economists among ex-drinkers -- much water needed
• Large Asian border lake
• Amu Darya outlet, once
• About 26,000 square miles of Asia, once
• Fourth-largest lake until the 1970s