The Rio Grande seen near the Bosque Trailhead in Albuquerque. In July, a five-mile stretch of the river in the city stopped flowing for the first time in four decades. Photo © Pablo Unzueta for Circle of Blue

Global Rundown

  • As the trade war rages, Mexico’s leaders are working to resolve their water debt to the U.S. as mandated by an 81-year-old treaty that has never been more fraught.
  • A new report reveals that companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are building their data centers in some of the world’s most water-stressed areas.
  • Israel has shut off a majority of water supplies to Gaza City, affecting nearly the entire entire population of 1.2 million people. 
  • Atmospheric rivers have been occurring more frequently in Turkey over the past few decades, new research suggests, including one deluge that hit directly after the deadly 2023 earthquakes, adding to the event’s devastation.

The Lead

As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to threaten sweeping tariffs and escalate tensions over immigration at the southern border, Mexican officials are preparing for a long few years of political brokering — and water is at the top of their minds, Reuters reports. 

Waterways have no regard for lines drawn on a map, and the two nations are hydrologically connected — the mighty Colorado River flows from the U.S. into Mexico, and tributaries of the Rio Grande flow from Mexico into the border river. Under a treaty signed in 1944, the two countries agreed to share fresh water with each other “through a network of interconnected dams and reservoirs.” 

For Mexico, this means sending 1.75 million acre-feet of Rio Grande water to its northern neighbor every five years. But an ongoing drought, attributed to climate change, has made water-sharing difficult during the latest five-year cycle. Mexico still owes the U.S. 70 percent of the water that is required to be delivered in this cycle, which ends in October. “Put another way, Mexico owes enough water to supply a mid-sized city for around 30 years,” Reuters reports.

The treaty accounts for drought, allowing water payments to rollover into the next cycle. Last month, for the first time in the treaty’s history, the U.S. denied a request from Mexico for emergency water deliveries to drought-stricken Tijuana to “send a message” regarding Mexico’s unpaid water debts, according to Border Report.

With North American trade, immigration, and water tensions at an arguable all-time high, sources told Reuters that Mexican officials are working to ensure their water debts are paid by October to avoid further retaliation.

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

70

Percent of Gaza’s total supply of drinking water that has been cut off by the Israeli water company Mekorot, one of the main water sources for Palestine, Al Jazeera reports. The shutoff has affected approximately 90 percent of the 1.2 million people living in Gaza City. 

59,000

People who died in the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes that occurred just nine hours apart in 2023 and devastated southern Turkey and northwestern Syria. Now, new research suggests that the death toll was exacerbated by an atmospheric river — a one-in-20-year storm — that hit the region just 36 days after the earthquakes, prompting landslides and flooding that caused damage and severely inhibited recovery efforts, Eos reports. An increase in atmospheric river frequency has been observed in Turkey over the past 40 years, and is attributable to climate change.  

On the Radar

A new investigation from The Guardian and nonprofit SourceMaterial reveals that the world’s largest data centers are operating — and expanding — in some of the world’s most water-scarce areas. These centers, which store and process massive amounts of data, including those which operate new AI models, often need to be built inland from the sea and in areas of low-humidity — conditions which tend to coincide with water-scarce locations. Massive amounts of freshwater is used to cool the equipment, with Google and Meta, for example, withdrawing several billion gallons in recent years.

A map of 632 existing or in-progress data centers owned by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft show the extent of these conflicting water demands. These operations concentrate in the arid American West, South Africa, northern Spain, northeastern China, Israel, and the Arabian Peninsula — all areas which have been dealing with water stress and shortages in recent years.

In context: Data Centers a Small, But Growing Factor in Arizona’s Water Budget

Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region

Michigan’s PFAS Testing Mandate: A new PFAS testing mandate from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy is now active within the state — a requirement that aims to better understand the health of waterways but is also threatening significant shipping delays, the Detroit News reports. At least 17 locations within federal harbors and channels scheduled for dredging are located next to suspected sources of PFAS, and will require testing before those projects can move forward under the new rule. But because “the state hasn’t yet officially defined the acceptable PFAS thresholds for the dredged sediments or the guidelines for disposing of PFAS-contaminated material,” these projects have experienced months-long delays that threaten slow traffic and business into the summer.

In Minnesota, Invasive Species Budget Cuts: For roughly the past decade, aquatic invasive species prevention and eradication efforts throughout Minnesota have received $10 million per year in state funding, Minnesota Public Radio reports. But the state’s new proposed budget would cut this funding in half. Environmentalists are expressing their concerns for the health of rivers and lakes, vulnerable to the spread of species including starry stonewort and zebra mussels.

Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.

  • In a Nova Scotia research lab, the last hope for an ancient fish species — The Narwhal
  • Autoworkers’ long history of protecting our environment — Great Lakes Now
  • Trump reverses cuts to Great Lakes lamprey program, but uncertainty remains — Bridge Michigan
  • Michigan needs rain, but not too much rain! — Michigan Public

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.