Mexico and the U.S. said they reached an agreement they hope will address Mexico’s habit of falling behind on water-sharing payments in the Rio Bravo watershed, also known as the Rio Grande.
The agreement announced Saturday provides Mexico with tools and flexibility to deliver water earlier in a five-year cycle under the 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty, according to the bilateral International Border and Water Commission.
The proposed tools include better coordination on water conservation, re-use, alternative water sources and other measures.
The treaty moves in five-year cycles and allows Mexico to run a water debt in the first four years, if it can make it up in the fifth. That has led Mexico to fall behind, hoping a hurricane or other heavy rains will dump water in the border area.
That has frustrated Texas farmers, who need a predictable supply of water. When a hurricane or tropical storm hits the region, Mexico can play catch-up but at that point, the water isn't needed, and that doesn't always happen. Mexico has long used that wait-and-hope strategy, but it has led to problems in the past, both at home and in the U.S.
Mexico is obliged to deliver 350,000 acre-feet of water per year, or about 1.75 million acre-feet (2.15 billion cubic meters) over 5 years. An acre-foot of water is enough to flood a field with one foot of water. The United States, in return, gives Mexico even more water from other water sources farther west.
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But in the current cycle which began in 2020, Mexico has so far delivered only about 425,000 acre-feet overall, only about one quarter of what it owes for the five-year period, which ends in October 2025.
Mexico has to release water from dams on tributaries feeding into the Rio Grande but that angers Mexican farmers, who want it for themselves and call it “our water.” The treaty gives the United States rights to one-third of the flows from six Mexican tributaries.
In 2020, a dispute over water payments to the United States boiled over into violence, with angry farmers pushing back National Guard troops guarding a dam, because Mexico had fallen behind on payments in that cycle and had to deliver water quickly to the United States.
Mexico dispatched National Guard officers to protect the La Boquilla dam in that 2020, but hundreds of farmers pushed and shoved them back hundreds of yards in a failed bid to take over the dam’s control room.
Before that, farmers took over another dam near the border town of Ojinaga. Both dams are located near the Texas border, west of the Big Bend area.
During the 2020 conflict, Mexican farmers also burned vehicles and blocked railway lines. In the end, the United states allowed Mexico to transfer rights to water held in joint international reservoirs, in a face-saving solution.