US-Mexico river deal cuts Mexico’s Colorado River share by 250,000 acre-feet for 2 years

About 40 million people depend on the Colorado River system across the United States and Mexico. From drinking water to municipal needs and even agricultural irrigation, both countries depend on the river and have shared and formally managed its water under a binational agreement for over 80 years. They signed the 1944 Water Treaty, where US guaranteed Mexico an annual delivery of 1.5 million acre-feet of water under normal conditions.But recently, water officials from US and Mexico signed a new agreement for sharing the Colorado River where Mexico agreed to take less water from the river under a new deal. Expert onlookers are heralding the deal as a success and a rare example of cross-border collaboration. They said the cuts are necessary in response to a severely depleted Colorado River.The river which starts in the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, once met the Pacific Ocean on the Mexican coast. But since the 1960s, it has rarely reached the sea due to extensive water use by cities and farms throughout the American Southwest.A tweaked treatyInterestingly, this is not the first time that the treaty has been tweaked. The two nations have previously also shifted the amount of wa...