From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernice and this is the Daily.

40 million people in seven states in the Western US depend on water provided by the Colorado

River.

After 20 years of drought, that river has reached a breaking point and those seven states

were supposed to come up with the deal to cut their use of that water by today.

My colleague Christopher Flaville explains why the federal government may now have to step

in and make an agonizing choice.

It's Tuesday, January 31st.

Since we know the water situation in the West is pretty bad, but you've reported now

that the problem and that the effort to solve the problem has come to a crisis point.

So tell me about that.

What's going on?

So the US has had a drought in the West since 2000 and that's meant a lot of things,

but one of them is at the Colorado River which provides water to about 40 million people

in seven states is drying up those states or Arizona, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Utah,

New Mexico and Colorado.

Its annual flow is decreasing precipitously, but now for years states and the federal government

had tried to cut the use of that water, but it hasn't worked.

They haven't cut enough.

So last year, as those levels got really low, officials said we have to do more.

The last summer, the federal government said we want these seven states to find a deal

to cut their total water use by two to four million acre feet.

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