Western US states fail to agree on plan to manage Colorado River before federal deadline

Stakeholders have spent months ironing out disagreements over how to distribute water from the sprawling basin

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 (8.9m hectares) of farmland, dozens of tribes and parts of Mexico - as the resources grow increasingly scarce.