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The leaders of seven states failed to negotiate a deal to share the diminishing waters of the Colorado River by a Trump administration deadline on Saturday, leaving the Southwest in a quagmire with uncertain repercussions while the river’s depleted reservoirs continue to decline.

Former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said in an interview with The Times that the impasse now appears so intractable that Trump administration officials should take a step back, abandon the current effort and begin all over again.

The Mexican government is set to begin construction of the Playas de Rosarito desalination plant at the end of March, marking a key step in Baja California’s efforts to expand its water supply, reports BNAmericas. The project is part of the region’s water infrastructure plan and involves a combined investment of over 14.6 billion pesos (approximately US$840 million) from both federal and state sources, according to Efraín Morales, the general director of the National Water Commission (Conagua).

The desalination plant, expected to be the largest and most modern of its kind in Latin America, will have a production capacity of 2,200 liters per second. This will boost the water supply by up to 45% for the cities of Tijuana and Playas de Rosarito. Morales stated that while Conagua will oversee the plant’s construction, the state government will manage the distribution infrastructure.

Public hearings around California have made the stakes unmistakable: environmental groups argue that the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delt accelerating ecological decline requires immediate action, while farm districts and urban water agencies warn any changes to water policy could disrupt supply chains, threaten major segments of the state’s agricultural economy, and drive up water bills for households across California.

With those stakes at play, California regulators are moving toward the final approval of The Bay-Delta Plan, which would require more freshwater to remain in rivers and estuaries, limiting how much can be pumped south during much of the year.

A record snow drought with unprecedented heat is hitting most of the American West, depleting future water supplies, making it more vulnerable to wildfires and hurting winter tourism and recreation.

Scientists say snow cover and snow depth are both at the lowest levels they’ve seen in decades, while at least 67 Western weather stations have measured their warmest December through early February on record. Normal snow cover this time of year should be about 460,000 square miles — about the size of California, Utah, Idaho and Montana — but this year it’s only California-sized, about 155,000 square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

As water agencies across California grapple with the increasingly extreme effects of climate change, they’re also facing another problem: the incoming “silver tsunami.”

That’s the phrase coined by the industry to illustrate the fact that much of the workforce — largely baby boomers — that keeps our water flowing and safe are getting ready to retire. Nationwide, about a third of the nation’s water workforce is eligible for retirement within the next decade, “the majority being workers with trade jobs in mission critical positions,” the Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a 2024 report.