Mexico and the US fail to comply with the water treaty due to the drought of the Bravo and Colorado rivers

Angelica Enciso L.

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, August 30, 2022, p. 18

The two basins in the north of the country, the Colorado River and the Bravo River, face severe droughts that have prevented the United States and Mexico from complying with the water deliveries established in the 1944 International Water Treaty.

Mexico will receive 8 percent less water from the Colorado River, which will reduce the volume for agricultural use, and the United States has received only 88 million cubic meters, of the 692 million that it should have obtained from the Rio Grande in the last two years, reported José Gutiérrez Ramírez, manager of Engineering and Binational Affairs of the National Water Commission (Conagua).

From the Rio Grande, Mexico must send 2,158 million cubic meters of water to the United States in a five-year cycle, but in the current period, which began two years ago, until August 13, the delivery deficit already totaled 604 million cubic meters, he explained.

The international dams found in Coahuila and Tamaulipas had very low levels as of August 13, the Amistad reservoir was at 11.78 percent full and Falcón at 12.62 percent. He indicated that the advantage is that these deliveries are made in five-year cycles, today number 36 is running, and he trusted that the conditions will improve to cover the commitment.

He explained that the reduction, as of January 2023, of 128 million cubic meters (out of 1,850 million) of water that the country will no longer receive from the Colorado River, will not affect the domestic urban public supply, which is guaranteed, and there are communities that are supplied through wells from irrigation systems.

The users of the Irrigation District 014 of Baja California will be divided equally by the water restriction, but 8 percent will not affect them too much, the official considered. He specified that the water from the Colorado River mainly supplies irrigated agriculture and supplies the populations of Mexicali, Tijuana, Tecate and Ensenada.

A great effort is being made to deal with the problem and intense work is being done with the United States based on act 323 of the same treaty and, therefore, investments will be made in conservation, channel lining, and modernization of the irrigation district. A working group has been created to identify new actions and more than 100 million dollars will be allocated to prevent water from reaching critical levels that affect 40 million people who depend on that basin, he said.

Irrigation district 014 obtains 88.31 percent of the water that Mexico receives from the Colorado River, since the city of Mexicali is mainly supplied by an annual concession of 100 cubic hectometres, of which 8.3 percent are from the Colorado River. and the rest is groundwater from the aquifers of the Mexicali Valley, San Luis Río Colorado and San Felipe-Punta Estrella, indicates Conagua in the report The water in the valley of Mexicali, Baja California.

The Colorado River basin is a product of the melting that occurs in the Rocky Mountains, the flow flows southwest towards the Gulf of California with an approximate length of 2,334 kilometers, crosses seven states of the American Union and runs through the last 160 kilometers between the borders of the states of Sonora and Baja California, he adds.

According to the International Boundary and Water Commission between Mexico and the United States, the current drought is the worst in the 114-year recorded history. Total storage in Colorado River dams is at 34 percent of usable capacity, its lowest levels on record.