The future of the American west hangs in balance this week, as seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Time is running short to reach a deal before a critical deadline, set for Saturday.

In the region where water has long been the source of survival and conflict, the challenges hindering consensus are as steep as the stakes are high.

Snaking across 1,450 miles (2,300km) from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, the Colorado supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland and dozens of tribes. The waters fuel an estimated $1.4tn in economic activity, and raised bustling cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The sprawling basin is also home to diverse ecosystems, with scores of birds, fish, plants and animals, and provides critical habitat for more than 150 threatened or endangered species.

The river has also been overdrawn for more than a century. As demand continues to grow, rising temperatures and lower precipitation caused by the climate crisis are taking an increasingly larger share of declining supplies, a trend only expected to worsen as the world warms.

But the river has been overdrawn for more than a century. As demand continues to grow, rising temperatures and lower precipitation caused by the climate crisis are taking an increasingly larger share of declining supplies, a trend only expected to worsen as the world warms.

Up to 4m acre-feet of cuts are needed to bring the basin back into balance – an amount equal to more than a quarter of its annual average flow. One acre-foot, a unit denoting the amount of water that can cover a football field one foot deep, is equal to roughly 326,000 gallons – enough to supply roughly three families for a year.

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“There needs to be unbelievably harsh, unprecedented cuts” that will affect water users in major ways, said Dr Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. “Mother Nature is not going to bail us out.”

The collapse of the arid western US thus begins...

The future of the American west hangs in balance this week, as seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Time is running short to reach a deal before a critical deadline, set for Saturday.

In the region where water has long been the source of survival and conflict, the challenges hindering consensus are as steep as the stakes are high.

Snaking across 1,450 miles (2,300km) from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, the Colorado supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland and dozens of tribes. The waters fuel an estimated $1.4tn in economic activity, and raised bustling cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The sprawling basin is also home to diverse ecosystems, with scores of birds, fish, plants and animals, and provides critical habitat for more than 150 threatened or endangered species.

The river has also been overdrawn for more than a century. As demand continues to grow, rising temperatures and lower precipitation caused by the climate crisis are taking an increasingly larger share of declining supplies, a trend only expected to worsen as the world warms.