U.S. trying to help address Mexico’s water debt to the Rio Grande

MERCEDES, Texas (Border Report) — The United States is working with Mexico to make changes to a decades-old water treaty to help Mexico with its water debt to the United States, and help them with infrastructure to capture water so it can flow into the Rio Grande, the head of the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission said Tuesday.

U.S. IBWC Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner oversaw a meeting held in the small South Texas border town of Mercedes on Tuesday evening where she addressed concerns by farmers and growers who say there hasn’t been enough water in the Rio Grande for them to produce normal crops because Mexico is behind in water payments to the United States.

Giner told the stakeholders that she is working with her Mexican counterparts to adjust the 1944 international water treaty to allow Mexico to “pre-pay” the water it owes during a five-year cycle so the country could make large water deposits if, say, they get a big rain. Currently they cannot pre-pay water and they are paying the United States with whatever spills out of its basin.

Any changes to the treaty require both countries to buy in and are called “minutes.”

“Mexico has operated their basin where any excess flows are what flow into the Rio Grande. It’s what meets their water deliveries. So we have been working with them on them managing their basin in a way where Texas is a user. That’s one of the basic principles that’s going into this minute,” Giner told Border Report after the nearly three-hour long meeting Tuesday. “This minute is a way to change the status quo.”

“The status quo is not working,” she told the group of about 40 people. “We’ve had a pattern of this constant hand-ringing every five years of cycles.”

Both countries are currently in the start of the fourth year of the five-year water cycle, and Mexico is way behind in its water payments, according to data from the USIBWC, the El Paso-based organization that oversees the Rio Grande.

On average, Mexico should pay 350,000 acre feet of water per year in the cycle, which would have it reach its goal of 1.7 million acre feet by the end. But as of Saturday, Mexico has only sent 375,819 acre feet.

That means it owes a whopping 1.3 million acre feet of water from its six tributaries that feed into the Rio Grande by October 2025.

Tudor Uhlhorn, chairman of RGV Sugar Growers, based in Harlingen, said that he doesn’t believe Mexico has the capacity to hold and properly transfer the water it owes to the United States.

“Who do we talk to? Who decides the interpretation? Because Mexico doesn’t have the storage capacity to meet what they owe,” Uhlhorn told Giner during a question-and-answer period. “We’ve been beating our head against the wall for 30 years.”

Dante Galeazzi, president and CEO of the Texas International Produce Association, questioned what happens when Mexico misses water payments.

“What are the consequences? There aren’t any consequences,” Galeazzi told Giner.

He said growers are down with production of watermelon, onions and citrus crops in the Rio Grande Valley because of the summer’s drought and low water levels that forced farmers with water rights to the Rio Grande to get less water then they need.

Giner responded that all she can do is put a binational policy in place — via a new minute. She says punitive measures would require military action or trade sanctions and she does not have that authority.

“Mexico would have walked away right from the negotiating table if we had said ‘You have to do this,'” Giner told the audience. “You have to negotiate and this is as far as we could get it.”

In September 2020, Mexican farmers clashed with National Guard troops troops at a dam in the northern state of Chihuahua in the town of La Boquilla to stop water flowing into the United States. Two people were left dead during the incident. The dam was open after Mexico had again fallen behind in water payments and was trying to pay back some of its debt.

Since the 1990s, Mexico has had trouble meeting the water the country owes during the five-year cycles.

Giner says a lot of that has to do with drought and a lack of rain that has plagued the country for the past 30 years. And she says the problem has to get fixed because the trend is less rain every year and hotter weather.

She says the new plan also would allow Mexico to send water via reservoir transfers.

“We’re putting incentives for them to deliver earlier within the five years. We’re also looking at how we grow the pie. Growing the pie is creating projects, new water sources that will bring more water to the area,” Giner told Border Report.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.