McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The clock is ticking down on Mexico’s deadline this month to pay the United States water it owes under a 1944 international treaty.
Border Report Live: Water battles between the US and Mexico persist
So far, Mexico has paid less than half what it owes during this five-year cycle, which ends on Oct. 25.
Former McAllen Mayor Jim Darling, chairman of the Region M Water Planning Group, says Mexico has the water due to recent rains. But it hasn’t paid the United States, and specifically South Texas.
“They do owe it and you don’t want to let them slide or they’ll never pay it back. So, you got the water you should pay it back,” Darling told Border Report on Tuesday.
The Region M Water Planning Group met Tuesday for several hours. They represent eight South Texas counties from Cameron, on the Gulf, to Maverick, which includes Eagle Pass. They’re trying to plan their next five-year cycle to make sure all the border cities have enough water. But he says that’s difficult when they’re uncertain how much water, if any, Mexico will send north of the border.
“They had a chance three years ago. They were flushed with water three years ago, and could have done it, but they didn’t,” Darling said.
Mexico must pay the United States 1.75 million acre-feet of water every five years. The current cycle ends Oct. 25 but so far they have only sent 807,980 acre-feet to the Rio Grande, according to the latest data from the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Mexico owes 942,020 acre-feet of water. That’s almost enough water to fill half a million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
In order to make the five-year cycle deadline, Mexico is supposed to pay the United States 350,000 acre-feet of water every year. But according to the IBWC, they had barely paid one year’s worth by the start of Year 4 last October.
After President Trump took office, he briefly stopped making U.S. water payments to Mexico via the Colorado River, and during that past few months, Mexico has nearly doubled the amount it paid this entire cycle.
But Tudor Uhlhorn, chairman of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers Inc., recently told Border Report that he’s mad at Mexico for not complying with the international water treaty and he doesn’t believe the United States should send Mexico any water until it pays its debt to us.
“You stop sending the water on the Colorado to them and tell them, ‘If you’re not going to give us our water, we’re not going to give you yours.'” Uhlhorn said. “The first thing that we need to do is get the water that’s owed to us under the treaty.”
A general view of the US-Mexico Border where the river ends at the Morelos Dam on March, 14 2019 in Mexicali, Mexico. The rivers usually end in the sea, the Colorado dies in a border. (Photo by Luis Boza/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images).
Under the treaty, the United States must send Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually via the Colorado River out West.
Former U.S. International Water and Boundary Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner says the United States always makes it payments, and on time.
But she recently told Border Report that Mexico appears to lack the infrastructure to capture and hold water, and perhaps the discipline to make regular annual payments and to meet its deadline.
“They manage their basin in a way that they’ve only ever really delivered water through what they spill or cannot capture. There’s not necessarily intentional deliveries that are being made so definitely Texas is not being managed as a user,” said Giner, who stepped down in April.
“The way Mexico is managing its basins is not working for them or for us,” she said.
Mexico is to pay the United States 350,000 acre-feet of water annually via the Rio Grande, as seen from the river’s banks in Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
Texas’ only sugar mill shut down in Santa Rosa in early 2024 because sugar growers in the Rio Grande Valley didn’t have enough water to grow the thirsty plants.
Some investors are trying to reopen the plant but will import sugar and refine it. There aren’t any local growers to support the plant now, which was one of only three sugar plants in the entire country.
Border Report Live: Investors plan to get South Texas sugar mill back up and running
“Mexico has ignored their obligation to provide water to the U.S. under that treaty, the primary area that has ignored the treaty is the state of Chihuahua. They don’t believe that they are supposed to give any water to the United States. We’re only entitled to the water they can’t catch, and they have continued to expand their irrigated acreage,” Uhlhorn said.
He is urging the Trump administration to get tough on Mexico.
Said Uhlhorn: “They just continued, especially since the 1990s to irrigate more and more of the desert over there with crops like pecan trees and alfalfa and walnut trees that use a considerable amount of water, without any regard to we need to deliver 350,000 acre-feet a year, more or less, to the United States. They just don’t believe that they have to do that, which is not what the treaty says.”
Darling concedes that the United States needs to do more to conserve the water it has, and to look to long-term solutions, like reusing ground water.
“Water management on our side is important too, and probably especially in the Valley, more than any place else,” he said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
