On a special episode (first released on August 21, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: America’s has a hidden water crisis. Parts of the US are drying out, and scientists warn the aquifers that keep the Southwest alive are disappearing far faster than they can be replenished. Jay Famiglietti, a global futures professor at Arizona State University who has extensively studied the nation’s water supplies, joins The Excerpt to explain.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello. I'm Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt. The US water supply is struggling under the combined pressures of drought, aging infrastructure, thirsty AI data centers, and over-extraction. The need is evident, but how can the US source more water? A long-standing agreement between the US and Canada on water rights and obligations, it's currently being renegotiated by the Trump administration. Among the US 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 US water crisis, the current state of shared water resources with our neighbors to the north and south, along with innovative solutions is Jay Famiglietti, a Global Futures Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Thanks for joining me, Jay.

Jay Famiglietti:

Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dana Taylor:

Let's start with what one of our journalists referred to as our Western water woes. Your recent research paper published in July in the journal, ScienceAdvances, and quoted in ProPublica notes that drying regions are expanding. This is, of course, a global issue, but what are the implications for the US?

Jay Famiglietti:

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 mega drought 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 stress on our groundwater.

Dana Taylor:

What impact is over-extraction having on the US water supply? What happens when too much groundwater is removed, and where is this most evident in the US?

Jay Famiglietti:

The over-exploitation of groundwater is by far the biggest problem in the southwestern part of the United States. There are many, many consequences of over-pumping groundwater. The biggest of which is that a lot of that groundwater is not coming back. It took hundreds of thousands of years to fill up those aquifers during a geologic time, and we're burning through it in a century. So the implications are a lack of available water for people, for the environment, and importantly to grow food. There's other impacts like depletion of rivers. In some places we have sinking ground, which we call subsidence impacts, biodiversity, and of course, falling water tables, and the increased cost of drilling deeper and deeper wells, which really becomes an accessibility issue, and only the biggest farms and the wealthiest people can afford to drill those deeper wells.

Dana Taylor:

How urgent is this crisis? What's the current state of water availability in the US? Which parts of the country are most at risk of not having enough water?

Jay Famiglietti:

Well, so you mentioned the paper that we just published. In that paper. There's a very interesting map that looks at the world by country and then within the United States by state. And again, it's that southwestern quadrant of the US that's most at risk. It's where we use the most groundwater. It's where we grow the most food. And so if we don't really pay attention to it, our food security and our water security will be a great risk. This is really important, of course, not only for food, but for economic vitality. Groundwater is really the lifeblood of the region. We used to say it was the Colorado River, and as that's been in decline, in my opinion, groundwater has really taken over as the most important to the most valuable natural resource in the southwestern states, and one which is probably the least appreciated.

Dana Taylor:

Turning now to Canada, what are the pressure points here for the US and Canada from sharing water resources to maintaining water infrastructure?

Jay Famiglietti:

Well, I used to live in Canada. I worked up there for five years, and as someone who has lived on both sides of the border, first of all, people up in Canada are not necessarily worried at all about the United States coming for their water. And then my impression in the United States is that there's not a lot of people in the United States thinking about going to Canada for water. The Great Lakes region is one that is quite sensitive about people coming in and taking their water, but maybe that's way out in the future. The United States itself has plenty of water. Three quarters of the country has been getting wetter. We are fortunate in the United States to have a country that's large enough that we can have water security. The challenge is the future. How do we move water? Do we need to move water across longer distances than we already do?

Right now, most of that water movement is within states. Do we need to start moving water from state to state? Do we need to start sharing groundwater and talk about groundwater between states? Right now it's just by individual states. So those are things that we have to worry about for the future. But right now, the southwest, yes, it's urgent, but conservation, more efficiency will help us get out and really achieve sustainability. Again, bigger picture, it's a big country with a lot of water, and we have to start thinking about what we're going to do in 20 years or 30 years from now. If these groundwater supplies start to dwindle, what are we going to do about that?

Dana Taylor:

Over the last 10 years, Mexico has repeatedly fallen short on its water deliveries to the US, what's led to those shortfalls, which by one estimate of cost taxes farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue?

Jay Famiglietti:

So it's interesting that you point that out. In this recent paper of ours, we wrote a similar paper 10 years ago, and so the new paper is in part an update. And part of the reason that we did an update is that certain regions, and Mexico and Central America are two of those regions, it really declined a lot over the last decade, and that's because of climate change, and that's because of over-exploitation of groundwater. Increased temperature and shortages can also be a result of inadequate water management. All those things are in play in Mexico and in Central America. So these are the issues that these countries have to deal with. I think it would be great if the United States could lend some capacity and do some capacity building in those regions to help share new technology. It might be treatment technology. It might be sewage recycling. It might be ideas about how to conserve more water or irrigate more efficiently. There's a lot that we can share, and also probably learn from those regions.

Dana Taylor:

I mentioned AI data centers, which require large quantities of water to operate. Their installation has led to water issues for those living near some of these centers that go beyond scarcity, what are the concerns here?

Jay Famiglietti:

Well, the biggest concerns I think, at least in the United States, and I live near Phoenix, and that's a huge Mecca for data centers and for computer chip manufacturers, and they're quite water intensive. But the power issues, at least in the Phoenix area, are bigger. Agriculture uses most of the water. Data centers are not close, at least in food producing regions. But that said, in some regions, the data centers, if you look across an entire state, the fraction of the overall water budget may not be great, but if you look in a region, they could end up using all of the water. And so I think we need to, people like myself who study water and think about water balances, and accounting for water use, need to really understand what the water budget of the data centers looks like, and what fraction of that is coming from renewable water supply, and what fraction of that is coming from, say, non-renewable groundwater. We need to really work closely with the data centers to pin that down because they're so important to us, and we need them for our economic growth.

Dana Taylor:

I want to turn now to innovative solutions to increase the abundance of an access to fresh water here in the US. Nuclear power seems poised to make a comeback. What can you share with us regarding nuclear power desalination plans? How would they work? Are they feasible? Are they safe?

Jay Famiglietti:

Well, people have long been concerned about nuclear power in any form of any use, and so that's a personal or a regional issue. But that aside, desalination, I think, is important. There are traditional concerns with desalination, and that is the power, and so the nuclear power may mitigate some of that, but the cost of the water, say per gallon, because it's very expensive, and what to do with the brines, the salt that you take out of the water is part of the desalination process, and it's quite toxic. And so those are all still there. I think that they are solvable problems, and renewable energy or nuclear power are part of that solution. One thing I do want to say though is that desalination will probably work best in coastal metropolitan regions. It's never going to be a solution for agriculture because agriculture just uses so much water. Agriculture uses year around the world, about 80% of the water that's withdrawn from rivers, and reservoirs, and from groundwater.

Dana Taylor:

What more can be done here without looking beyond our borders to protect the US water supply? Are there other solutions that hold promise?

Jay Famiglietti:

There are many, many solutions. I think we need to be thinking about a portfolio of solutions region by region, whether it's river basin by river basin, or aquifer by aquifer, or state by state. In agricultural regions, more efficient irrigation. Thinking about what crops we plant and what we do with those crops. Are we exporting them to other countries or are we using them for our own food security? Better monitoring, groundwater management, expansion of groundwater management in places where it, perhaps, doesn't cover the entire state, or some states have not really been enforcing their groundwater policy. So that's a big incentive. Technology of the sort that I work in, understanding how we can use satellites. There are so many small private satellite companies now that can do things more efficiently, that can focus on irrigation, that can focus on urban resilience in ways that NASA satellites that I work with just can't because they're big cruise ships compared to nimble speedboats. So there's a lot out there. It's the portfolio that's going to change from region to region.

Dana Taylor:

And finally, Jay, is there a region of the country or the world that's leading the way in terms of confronting or adapting to increasing demands on water resources?

Jay Famiglietti:

Yeah, I'd like to give a shout-out to Arizona actually, for starters, because Arizona is in the crosshairs of climate change and groundwater depletion, and we have a very water forward governor's office that is actively expanding groundwater protection across the state. Israel gets mentioned all the time because they're pioneers in technology, especially drip irrigation and in desalination. So those are a couple of examples. There's others. What I recommend in the United States, it's looking around the world and adopting the best available from around the world.

Dana Taylor:

Jay, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.

Jay Famiglietti:

My pleasure.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY'S The Excerpt.