State negotiators embroiled in an impasse over how to manage the imperiled Colorado River were unable to agree on a plan before a federally set deadline on Tuesday, thrusting deliberations deeper into uncertain territory.
Stakeholders have spent months working to iron out contentious disagreements over how to distribute water from this sprawling basin – which supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland, dozens of tribes and parts of Mexico – as the resources grow increasingly scarce.
