Hello, I'm Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of USA Today's The Excer.

The U.S. water supply is struggling under the combined pressures of drought, aging infrastructure,

thirsty AI data centers, and overextraction. The need is evident, but how can the U.S. source more water?

Longstanding agreement between the U.S. and Canada on water rights and obligations.

It's currently being renegotiated by the Trump administration.

Among the U.S. southern border with Mexico, where the water supply is less plentiful,

things are even more complicated.

What's the solution to America meeting its long-term water needs?

Here to discuss the U.S. water crisis, the current state of shared water resources with our neighbors

to the north and south, along with innovative solutions, is Jay Family Yeti, a global

futures professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Thanks for joining me, Jay.

Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Let's start with what one of our

journalists referred to as our Western Water Rose.

Your recent research paper published in July

in the journal Science Advances and quoted in ProPublica,

notes that drawing regions are expanding.

This is, of course, a global issue,

but what are the implications for the U.S.?

I think the biggest implication for the United States is that our southwestern quadrant of the country

will really be facing some very difficult choices and challenges, and that's because of the persistence of drought,

the megadrout that has blanketed the region and the overuse of groundwater. So we'll have a lot

of important choices to make as the Colorado River water supply decreases and we put more

...