ZOË SCHLANGER:

Yes, so Naveena Sadasivam and I at the Texas Observer had been talking to politicians and farmers and so many different people who had stakes in this river. And I think as a reporter based in New York, it was incredible for me to realize how border politics on the ground are so different from what we hear in the news. When both sides know that they need each other for this resource. No one can live without water. No one can farm without water. There's so much more collaboration than you'd think of.

So really right now it sounds like everyone's kind of holding and waiting to see what happens on the national level with the Trump administration as to what that will, how that will affect things on the ground for them. But on the whole, there's so much more collaboration than people think about. I think what really hit home with that for me is the fact that in Nogales, Arizona there's a pipe that goes right through the border wall to Nogales, Sonora in Mexico to feed a hotel and some other businesses water. So that's been there since when the water commissioner there said the border back then was like barely a fence. Maybe it wasn't even there at all when they started this collaboration, this informal water sharing practice. And they still do it. There's still, we went down and saw it and there's just a pipe straight through the wall carrying water.