U.S. Water News Online
DELICIAS, Chihuahua -- Tucked among parched canyons in the shadow of the Tarahumara mountains, a series of desert reservoirs holds a lifeline for two nations.
In Mexico, water from the Rio Conchos and the rivers that feed it transform arid land into verdant fields of alfalfa, melons and chile peppers. Some 600 miles away in Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley, the same water is coveted as the primary source for irrigation of 40 crops, including thousands of acres of prized citrus and sugar cane.
The Rio Grande, a ribbon of life amid sparse expanses of Texas and northern Mexico, connects the two fertile growing regions. It is barely a trickle when it flows south of El Paso toward Big Bend National Park. But at the confluence of the Rio Conchos, near the Texas border town of Presidio, the Rio Grande grows fivefold -- or at least it used to.
A decade ago, when the flow of the Rio Conchos began to slow, it didn't take long for Texas farmers to notice. They accused Mexico of stealing water they said was rightfully theirs under provisions of a 1944 treaty.
Since then, Mexico has racked up a water debt in the hundreds of billions of gallons, and a dispute that started between a few thousand farmers in far-flung corners of each country has reached the highest levels of government in Washington and Mexico City.
The quarrel over rights to a scarce resource in the fast-growing border region has become an early test of Mexican diplomacy for the Bush administration.
"This is probably one of the most difficult issues we have in our relationship right now, and it's difficult because we have no easy apparent solution," said Dennis Linskey, the U.S. State Department's coordinator for U.S.-Mexico border affairs.
The 1944 treaty dictates that Mexico provide the United States one-third of all water that flows from six Rio Grande tributaries, or a minimum of 350,000 acre-feet per year. In return, the United States must deliver to Mexico at least 1.5 million acre feet of water per year from the Colorado River, which flows south of the border from Arizona.
The United States has kept up its end of the treaty every year since 1950. Mexico, however, has accumulated a deficit of 1.4 million acre feet.
Mexico blames the shortfall on drought -- the United States says Chihuahua farmers have kept large reserves all to themselves.
"The problem is, they've turned the desert into an oasis with our water," said Wayne Halbert, irrigation district manager in Harlingen, who toured the agricultural region of Chihuahua last year.
South Texas farmers, suffering from a drought of their own, are clamoring for the water. Without it, they say, the Valley's agricultural economy could blow away with the spring crops that are now struggling to take hold in the dry soil.
The water shortage has cost the four-county Rio Grande Valley region nearly $1 billion in crop losses and related economic impact over the last decade, according to an analysis by John Robinson, an economist at Texas A & M Agricultural Extension Service in Weslaco. Farmers are converting thousands of acres to dry land crops such as grain sorghum, which brings small returns.
"We need deliveries of water by June of this year," said Carlos Ramirez, appointed by Bush as U.S. commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency that oversees water treaties between the two countries. "We understand their reservoirs are not at 100 percent capacity. However, we also understand that Mexico has enough water to meet its own needs and pay some debt."
Mexican water officials say the drought has left them without enough water for their own needs, much less those of U.S. farmers.
Return to the U.S. Water News Archives page Or Return to the U.S. Water News Homepage
Editor@uswaternews.com
*Your Name:
*Your Email:
*Friend's Email:
Use a comma to separate e-mail addresses:
*Your Comments:
Hi, I thought you might like to read this article.
*Required Fields