Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has confirmed her country’s intention to increase water deliveries to the United States, though not immediately, despite threats from US President Donald Trump to impose a 5 per cent tariff hike on Mexican imports.
Ms. Sheinbaum announced on Tuesday that Mexico is proposing a water delivery this month, with further shipments planned for the coming years.
President Trump threatened on Monday to impose an additional 5 percent tariff on Mexican goods over a long-running water dispute, reigniting diplomatic tensions that had flared earlier this year over water shortages in the borderlands.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump accused Mexico of failing to provide more than 800,000 acre-feet of water — or more than 260 billion gallons — under a 1944 treaty mediating the distribution of water from three rivers, the Rio Grande, the Colorado and the Tijuana. The president said that Mexico needed to “release 200,000 acre-feet of water before December 31st, and the rest must come soon after.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is “looking at all available options to respond,” his office said Monday in response to the Bureau of Reclamation’s decision last week that updates the Central Valley Project’s operating plan to permit higher water exports from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
“This politically motivated decision creates new risks for water availability, especially for Southern California cities, and the health of California’s waterways, fish, and wildlife,” said a press officer for Bonta in an email to The Sacramento Bee.
OceanWell’s new underwater desalination plant in Santa Monica Bay promises to install 60 pods at a depth of 400 meters by 2030, producing 227 million liters of potable water daily and reinforcing the water supply for 70 residents in western Los Angeles amid recurring drought.
Announced on August 20, 2025, the underwater power plant Water Farm 1 inaugurates the first major underwater desalination project in the United States, focused on directly transforming water from the Pacific Ocean into potable water on an industrial scale. The system will be installed in Santa Monica Bay, near Malibu, where approximately 60 modules are expected to operate at a depth of about 400 meters.
In a year of profound shifts at the federal level, uncertainty has been the name of the game across the United States. Nowhere is that truer than in the California water world.
Over many decades, the state has forged a symbiotic relationship with federal agencies to manage its notoriously complex — and aging — water system. The state has worked with an alphabet soup of federal agencies to manage some of the worst floods and droughts the state has ever seen.
Water has become a source of internal and external dispute for the Mexican government in recent months. On November 25, the U.S. State Department reported on a meeting between Mexican and U.S. officials in which, it claims, it “pressed” Mexico to comply with its obligation—stipulated in the 1944 Water Treaty—and supply “the maximum possible amount” of water to users in Texas. “The shortfall in water deliveries has exacerbated the shortage in Texas and contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses,” they warned.
The demand echoes months of complaints made by farmers in the southern United States, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Republican Senator Ted Cruz, some of the voices that have most pressured Mexico to comply with what was agreed in 1944, in the bilateral treaty that manages the distribution of water from three rivers: the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, and the Conchos River, for the population of both countries.
A legal battle over California water rights has reached the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court, raising a fundamental constitutional question: When the government commandeers water for environmental reasons, is it merely regulating a resource or physically seizing private property?
The Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief last week in the case of United Water Conservation District v. United States, asking the high court to clarify the boundaries of the Fifth Amendment. The brief argues that diverting water specifically for government use should be classified as a “physical taking,” a designation that would mandate just compensation for property owners.
California has added an estimated 2.9 billion gallons of drinking water to its annual supply following the completion or groundbreaking of eight state-funded water infrastructure projects this fall, according to state officials. The projects — located in communities from Orange County to the Bay Area and the Sierra — include wastewater treatment upgrades, recycled water systems and new desalination facilities.
State data shows the work is supported by about $590 million in grants and low-interest loans, much of it from the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. The investments are part of a broader effort to expand local water supplies and modernize aging systems as the state faces more volatile weather patterns. More than 1 million Californians are expected to benefit from the latest round of projects.
California can still wring water out of its rivers — in theory, and only if you’re willing to pay an increasingly steep premium for it.
Take Sites Reservoir, which could become the first new major reservoir in California in decades. It would pull water from the Sacramento River to fill a valley in the coast range with enough water for roughly 3 million households, then distribute it to the local farmers and Southern California cities that would partly fund its construction.
The Trump administration plans to weaken environmental protections for threatened fish in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and pump more water to Central Valley farmlands, according to letters obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The letters show Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration strongly criticizing the Trump administration plan.
