1 of 1 Photo: Abhishek Mittal / iStock / Getty Images
As crops have grown parched and some specialties are threatened, farmers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas are hoping for resolution to the dire need for more water.
Under a 1944 agreement, Mexico and the United States have been cooperating on keep water supplies plentiful, using reservoirs and aquifers to manage water flows.
But as of the last few years, a lack of water has become so persistent that the Valley has lost its sugar cane industry including the close of sugar refineries, and some vegetable crops are threatened.
"Droughts are cyclical," notes Valley farmer Brian Jones, but the recent troubles have been systemic and management of the situation is severely complicated by red tape.
Water is needed right away, and even though officials in Mexico have fallen behind by about a million acre-feet of water in keeping up their end of the 1944 water sharing agreement, Mexico is offering to send the Valley some water, but the offer will have to be administered by a division of the US Defense Department and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which complicates matters because of the paperwork and delays involved.
Jones says farmers have been appealing to members of the Biden administration for help in getting the water to their area from Mexico, but little has been done.
"We've been battling the Biden administration for at least two years, trying to get them to do something. Our next hope is that we have a change of administration. And when that change comes through that President Trump will apply" the needed pressure to Mexico to be sure the promised water can be delivered to Texas.
He says there is some concern that if the water is not claimed and delivered it may be diverted from Texas destinations back to Mexico, or even dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.