The clock is ticking down on Mexico’s deadline this month to pay the United States water it owes under a 1944 international treaty. So far, Mexico has paid less than half what it owes during this five-year cycle, which ends on Oct. 25.
Former McAllen Mayor Jim Darling, chairman of the Region M Water Planning Group, says Mexico has the water due to recent rains. But it hasn’t paid the United States, and specifically South Texas.
California often swings between climate extremes—from powerful storms to punishing droughts. As climate change drives more intense and frequent dry and wet cycles, pressure on California’s water supplies grows.
A new University of California, Davis, economic study finds that drought in California pushes the price of water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs up by $487 per acre-foot, more than triple the cost during an average wet year.
What was supposed to be a quick fix has turned into nearly a year of frustration for Escondido residents. Harding Street has been partially closed since January for aqueduct repairs, leaving drivers to navigate detours and congestion.
“It used to be two-way traffic,” said longtime resident Adrian Tejada. “My concern isn’t only for residents, it closes off shopping areas, so there’s only one way to come in.”
Spurts of goo oozed between Jeff Wingfield’s fingers as he methodically crushed a handful of golden mussels, popping the shells of the tiny invaders like bubblewrap. Last October, a couple of miles down the Stockton Deepwater Shipping Channel, state water managers first discovered that golden mussels had invaded North America.
“You can just push your way right through them,” said Wingfield from the dock where he stood at the Port of Stockton, looking down at the thimble-sized debris in his palm.
The Imperial Irrigation District recently held two workshops to update the public on the status of the negotiations on how Colorado River water will be distributed after the current guidelines expire at the end of next year.
The mood of the meeting reminded me of similar hearings back in 2003 when the IID was under heavy pressure to sign the Quantification Settlement Agreement, a basket of contracts that established new rules about water sharing in California. Most prominently, the QSA implemented the ongoing water transfers of nearly 500,000 acre-feet of water to the San Diego Water County Authority, MWD, and Coachella. The mood of those 2003 meetings was gloomy. And so it is now.
This week one of the nation’s earliest and most important public works projects, the 363-mile Erie Canal linking the Hudson River with Lake Erie, marked its 200th anniversary.
There was only negligible media and political notice. That’s regrettable, because the canal opening in 1825 utterly transformed the nation’s economy and ignited its expansion from a few sparsely populated former colonies on the Atlantic Coast some 3,000 miles westward to the Pacific Ocean.
In a plan that will reverberate more than 300 miles north at Mono Lake, Los Angeles city leaders have decided to nearly double the wastewater that will be transformed into drinking water at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys.
Instead of treating 25 million gallons per day as originally planned, the L.A. Board of Water and Power Commissioners voted to purify 45 million gallons, enough water for 500,000 people.
The city of Clyde sits about two hours west of Fort Worth on the plains of north Texas. It gets its water from a lake by the same name a few miles away. Starting in 2022, scorching weather caused its levels to drop farther and farther.
Within a year, officials had declared a water conservation emergency, and on August 1 of last year, they raised the warning level again. That meant residents rationing their spigot use even more tightly, especially lawn irrigation. The restrictions weren’t, however, the worst news that day: The city also missed two debt payments.
President Donald Trump loves a good water war — and the biggest one yet is about to land in his lap.
A quarter century of climate change and drought has driven water levels along the Colorado River and its two main reservoirs to historic lows, threatening supplies that support 40 million people and economies from Phoenix to Denver to Los Angeles.
Why is it axiomatic among California’s water agencies and policymakers that large scale desalination is inconceivable in California? That certainly isn’t the case in other arid locales. In 2024, an estimated 30 million acre feet of fresh water was produced by desalination plants worldwide.
On the coast of the Red Sea, about 60 miles south of the port city Jeddah, and only slightly further from the inland city of Mecca, the Shoaiba Desalination Complex produces nearly 900,000 acre feet of fresh water per year. Situated on approximately 1,200 acres, this one installation could, if it were located in California, supply more than 12 percent of ALL California’s urban water consumption. That’s not very much land, for an awful lot of water.
