On April 30, Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, announced the Mexican government had “agreed to deliver up to 420,000 acre-feet of water” through to October when the current five-year delivery cycle ends. In a June 9 letter to the editor, TJ Flowers, vice president of Lone Star Citrus Growers, thanked De La Cruz and the Trump administration for securing that additional water. And later that week, representatives of Texas agriculture and crops impacted by Mexican water withholdings met with the U.S. Department of State and others in Washington, D.C., to stress that far more needs to be done.
“Part of what we told them is, first and foremost, we are incredibly grateful for this water, and it’s going to be well used,” says Dante Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association.
It’s a great start, he says, but it is not enough and certainly not at the right time. Growers in Texas and beyond need a more comprehensive solution they can depend on.
“We need to create a system that ensures there is enforcement and that these deliveries occur beyond October. This is a great short-term victory,” he continues. “We need to capture this opportunity, but we also need to expand it.”
Water stats along the Rio Grande
According to the 1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico, Mexico must deliver 1.75-million-acre feet of water from the Rio Grande to the U.S. every five-year cycle. This means an average of 350,000 acre feet of water delivered per year. These cycles begin and end in late October, with the current cycle ending on Oct. 24.
According to the International Boundary and Water Commission — the U.S./Mexican international body responsible for applying the boundary and water treaties between the two countries — Mexico has delivered a total 618,799-acre feet through June 7. This level represents roughly a million-acre feet less than what Mexico should have delivered by this time in the cycle.
Even if Mexico delivers all of the 420,000-acre feet of water De La Cruz mentioned as being possible, that will bring Mexico’s total deliveries for this five-year cycle to just over a million-acre feet, slightly more than half of what Mexico is required to deliver. According to records available from the IBWC, recent cycles have seen declining volumes of water deliveries from Mexico.
Water uncertainty means lost U.S. ag
Assuming all of the additional 420,000-acre feet of water is delivered by October, it will not only not be enough, the timing will also be all wrong, according to Galeazzi.
“The problem is, our farming season runs well beyond October,” he says, explaining that growers in Texas, especially south Texas, plan their crops in late summer, plant in fall, and harvest through the beginning of the following summer.
“How are farmers in the U.S. going to make a plan and buy seed and borrow money and everything else if they don’t know if they’re going to have the water?” asks Greg Yielding, executive vice president of the National Onion Association, summarizing the issue.
He outlines the result of not having predictable water, pointing to the closure of Texas’ only sugar mill in 2024 as an example. Galeazzi too offeres an example of a watermelon grower who had to make the hard decision to cut acreage and ultimately sell a recently acquired packing facility due to water issues. Both men say these outcomes are going to get more likely.
“[Growers are] not going to be able to grow crops and, ultimately, more and more of these guys are going to sell off equipment or sell off land,” Galeazzi says. “Or, God forbid, they’re going to have to make the hardest decision: ‘Do I keep doing this another year or do I close up shop?’”
Mexican state of Chihuahua not cooperating
Both Galeazzi and Yielding identify the Mexican state of Chihuahua as a major problem underlaying a lot of the water delivery issues from Mexico.
“What has happened over the last 20 years is Chihuahua has significantly grown its agricultural production,” Galeazzi says.
He explains that since the early 2000s, Chihuahua has more than tripled its acreage of pecans. Yielding similarly notes that the acreage of citrus, onions and other long-term and/or water-hungry crops have expanded greatly in Chihuahua in recent years.
All of this is happening in a state that is roughly half desert. Galeazzi compares it to trying to grow produce in Las Vegas.
“Chihuahua and their agriculture is the same thing — they are growing in an area that should not be growing fresh produce,” he says. “That’s why you see these cycles go down year after year and these deliveries not happening. It’s not because they don’t have the water. Let’s be clear: Chihuahua has the water. They’re just using the water instead of delivering it like they said they would in the treaty.”
Yielding also says Chihuahua has been planting produce crops that directly compete with U.S. producers, pointing to onions as an example.
“They greatly increased their onion acres in the last 10 years, and they are only able to do that because they don’t release the water from the impoundments,” he says, stressing that such efforts impact all of U.S. agriculture, not just onion growers in Texas.
“What [Chihuahuan growers] do affects prices — and I specifically talk about onions — all the way up to Washington and Oregon and Idaho and New York and everywhere,” Yielding says. “It’s affecting everything, all onions, not just the Texas growers.”
Enforcement is key to 1944 treaty issues
Solving the ongoing issue of growing demand on the finite resource of shared water is a difficult one. Galeazzi points to other sources of water Mexico could tap to fulfill their treaty obligations such as the Rio San Juan. But ultimately, he says the situation in Chihuahua needs to change.
“Chihuahua is going to have to make some very difficult decisions about what stays and what goes, but ultimately, that’s where a bulk of that water can come from.” Galeazzi says. “Chihuahua is obligated to participate in a treaty that the country of Mexico signed with the country of the U.S., and it is not OK for a state in Mexico to not comply because they simply don’t want to or don’t think it’s fair.”
Enforcement is the key, however. Yielding says this is something for the current administration to take care of, praising recent past efforts of the Trump administration refusal to deliver water to Tijuana from the Colorado River.
“That’s the level it’s got to be at to get anything done.” he says. “We figured that out a while back. Everything was being done in terms of trying to negotiate with the Mexican government, and it hasn’t worked.”
Galeazzi also stresses the importance of enforcement. Though he says he doesn’t know what it might look like, he points to the upcoming renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement as a potential tool.
“That would be fantastic in my opinion, if the renegotiation occurred with a compliance mechanism for the water treaty.” Galeazzi says. “That has really been our ask of the government agencies as we move forward — we need compliance mechanisms created so that way Mexico sees that there is value in honoring that signature on the treaty.”
Yielding says he and the others who talked to the administration recently want them to know efforts can’t stop with these potential water deliveries.
“We don’t want people in the administration or the general ag community to think, ‘There’s going to be some water release, so everything must be OK,’” he says. “That’s not the case. This is not over.”
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