Mexico’s water payday to Texas came and went Oct. 24. Once the full data came out a few weeks later, it was clear Mexico had only paid half the water it owed.
While this was not a surprise, it was still disappointing, according to sources.
“We’re just wrapping up a third year of water shortage,” says Sonny Hinojosa, current water advocate and former general manager at the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 in San Juan, Texas. “So, we’re going to start a fourth year of having insufficient water for ag. We got half the water we need, so we’re going to be crippled again for fourth year.”
According to the 1944 treaty that governs water sharing between the U.S. and Mexico on the Rio Grande, Mexico must deliver 350,000 acre-feet of water annually, equating to 1.75 million acre-feet every five-year cycle. For this most recent five-year cycle, Mexico had only delivered 884,864 acre-feet, 50.5% of the total.
Texas Farm Bureau State Director Brian Jones called the situation infuriating in a statement issued on the last day of the previous cycle.
“Another missed water delivery deadline by Mexico is another serious blow to Rio Grande Valley farmers and communities,” he said. “Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley have done about as much as they can to hang on until Mexico delivers the water it owes, including reducing the number of acres planted and switching to dryland crops that require less water.”
He pointed to Texas’ recent loss of its sugar cane industry as an example. He also spoke from his own experience, saying he can’t irrigate a third of his operation — cotton, corn, grain sorghum and soybeans in Hidalgo County — even once with the water available to him.
“It’s getting harder and harder to hang on,” he said. “How can someone sustain more than half of their farm sitting unproductive? You can’t.”
Accolades for April’s Meeting
Despite the recent focus on five-year cycles, agricultural water needs to operate on a seasonal-to-annual cycle. The 1944 treaty also says the deliveries should be annual.
When looking at Mexico’s water deliveries on an annual scale, it did really well in this past year (Oct. 25, 2024, through Oct. 24, 2025), delivering roughly 475,000 acre-feet. Most of that delivery — about 360,000 acre-feet — happened since late April, following a meeting between the U.S. State Department and the Mexican government.
Hinojosa says he is very glad of the State Department’s efforts in the situation.
“Had it not been for that meeting and pressure being put on Mexico, we probably wouldn’t have got this much water from them,” he says.
According to Hinojosa, Texas agriculture needs about 1 million acre-feet of water per year. Based on the most recent data, the state has about 900,000 acre-feet of water in storage, including from what Mexico sent this year.
“But after you subtract the reserves and such, agriculture is just left with a little over 500,000 acre-feet,” Hinojosa says. Still, the steady flow of water from Mexico this year was helpful to agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley, he adds.
“The sad part about it is, it was in the summertime,” a time when the most water losses occur, he explains. “But nonetheless, we needed the water for our vegetable growers.”
This water year in the cycle is a bit of a bittersweet situation.
“We still don’t have sufficient water, but we have more water than we have had the last couple of years,” Hinojosa says.
Still, the 2020-2025 cycle came in as the third-lowest delivery cycle in the past 10. Only the 1992-1997 cycle (when about 41% was delivered) and the 1997-2002 cycle (about 33% delivered) were lower.
Inner Workings of Water Debt
Mexico now finds itself in water debt. Again.
When Mexico doesn’t make its full 1.75 million acre-feet of water deliveries in a five-year cycle, it goes into debt that it must repay in the subsequent five-year cycle. This repayment comes in addition to the water it owes during that cycle.
“So, everything must be repaid within a 10-year period,” Hinojosa explains, adding that the treaty doesn’t allow for the debt to be carried into a third five-year cycle, though that did happen following the 1992-1997 cycle. Mexico has fallen into a habit of waiting and gambling for “a tropical system to pay this water for them,” he adds.
“A cycle ends when the United States conservation capacity is filled at both reservoirs,” he explains. “So, if there was some kind of storm that filled our capacity at 3.3 million acre-feet, then a cycle ends, all debts are considered paid, and a new cycle begins.”
This weather-dependent mindset needs to change, Hinojosa says.
What Now?
Even with the comparatively good 2024-25 year of water deliveries from Mexico, Jones characterized the situation for Texas as a dire one.
“The 2026 spring planting season here begins in February, and agriculture has only 50% of the water it needs,” he said in his statement. “Something must be done and done now, or we risk losing an entire industry.”
Hinojosa says the U.S. needs more leverage to enforce the annual water deliveries from Mexico the 1944 treaty requires. He and many others have said working treaty enforcement into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a potential way to prevent these situations in the future.
The trade connection isn’t new. Hinojosa notes the short water deliveries from Mexico started after the North American Free Trade Association was executed in 1994.
“With the passage of NAFTA — that started out with waiving the tariffs on about 50% of the goods from Mexico, then 10 years later eliminated the tariffs completely — that just gave Mexico free rein to increase their irrigated agriculture with the water that used to flow into the Rio Grande,” he says. “That really hurt us.”
