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Western US states fail to agree on plan to manage Colorado River before federal deadline
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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The part that would have been the river delta in Mexico looked incredibly different a century ago before major population growth in the western US. Mexico really got screwed not just in territory loss when they outlawed slavery and the US invaded to take the west (good ol' Alamo)
Mexico still has more senior rights to the water than the states do, and they still get their water regardless of states disagreeing about what to do with the US portion. Although it is fucked what happened to the delta, that would likely have occurred anyways due to such heavy use of the water. It’s the same story all over the world almost everywhere on tons of rivers and caused by mismanagement. Look at the Aral Sea basically not existing anymore. There are former fishing towns that were seaside 50 years ago that are now hundreds of miles from water
Decades ago the US actually was very concerned about not being able to meet its water obligations to Mexico, due to the Colorado water being so heavily salted from use in irrigation before it got to Mexico, so we spent billions of dollars on a massive desalination plant in Yuma, AZ. It has only been turned on literally two times since it was built. Once to test it when it was new, and again to test it more recently. They estimate for us to use it would cost millions to update it, and millions to run. Although it would be very useful as the river declines.
Problem is, it has always had water running through it, and the runoff dumps into Mexico (as thats where they were gonna dump the brine). Had we dumped brine there starting decades ago, there would still be nothing living in that spot, but instead weve been running freshwater into it for so long that it created its own wetland environment. That spot is now a protected ecological area in Mexico because it has become a haven for different bird species. And if we turn on the plant for long term use, it will send its brine that spot and immediately kill everything off