The U.S. and Mexico have agreed to amend a water treaty, a move that would alleviate water shortage in South Texas.
The amended water treaty will provide Mexican authorities with new options to meet their water delivery obligations to the United States. Under the original 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water from six key tributaries to the U.S. every five years—an average of 350,000 acre-feet annually. However, as of now, Mexico still owes over 1.3 million acre-feet with a looming October 2025 deadline.
Now, Mexico is allowed to count water from reservoirs, the Falcon and Amistad, in addition to supplying water from the San Juan and Alamo rivers, giving the country more options to deliver water.
According to The Texas Tribune, the amendment also addresses an offer from Mexico to provide an additional 120,000 acre-feet of water that initially raised concerns among Texas farmers, who feared they might later be asked to compensate for this supply by giving up water stored for future use. However, the new amendment addresses this issue by enabling Mexico to fulfill its obligations through water stored in reservoirs.
Mexico had constantly fallen short of its obligations to deliver water to the U.S., putting pressure on Texas farmers who are facing a severe drought. With the amendments, now farmers might feel relieved that Mexico will have more options to deliver water to the U.S.
However, critics have argued that the treaty was flawed in the first place, as it didn’t take into account climate change and Mexico facing its most severe drought since 2011.
“The water delivery system has stayed the same, but the water crisis has worsened,” Vianey Rueda, a researcher at the University of Michigan told CNN. “You have treaties that were meant for a stable climate, but now are trying to be enforced in a climate that is not stable.”
The treaty amendment, originally scheduled for December 2023, was delayed until after Mexico’s June presidential elections. U.S. officials welcomed the agreement, seeing it as a critical step in addressing decades-long water management challenges along the Rio Grande.
“The last thirty years of managing over-stretched water resources in the Rio Grande basin have produced broad agreement that the status quo was not acceptable,” IBWC commissioner Maria-Elena Giner said in a statement. “ With the signing of this [amendment], Mexico has tools for more regular water deliveries that can be applied right away.”
