Deficit remains for more than half of the volume committed in water treatment

Angelica Enciso L.

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday February 7, 2023, p. eleven

Mexico maintains a deficit of more than half of the water that it must deliver to the United States, coming from the Rio Grande, in the context of the International Water Treaty of 1944. In the third year of the current cycle (of five years), it has sent 407 million cubic meters out of a total of 938. Each year the country must send 431.6 million cubic meters, although it has a deadline of the end of the cycle, which is in October 2025, to deliver all the liquid for the period, said José Gutiérrez Ramírez, manager of Engineering and Binational Affairs of the Conagua.

Meanwhile, in the context of a 20-year drought in the Colorado River basin, a channel that crosses part of the United States and flows into the Upper Gulf of California, the neighboring country must send 1,850 million cubic meters a year to Mexico, but last year an 8 percent reduction in allocation was agreed, of which 761 million correspond to users from the neighboring country and 129 million to ours, particularly irrigation district 014.

In an interview, the official said that since last August they knew that less water would be received and the allocations to the agricultural sector were adapted, since the priority of uses places the urban public in first place, Cities and people are protected. He specified that the Hoover Dam, located between Arizona and Nevada, from which water is supplied to Mexico, is at 29 percent of its capacity, the lowest level in its entire history. This speaks of the havoc that the drought is causing.

The third year of cycle 36 of the treaty regarding the Rio Grande is currently underway and, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission (Cila), on January 21 the country had to deliver 938 million cubic meters. We are 535 million cubic meters below the committed volume. While the United States has to give 1.8 billion cubic meters each year, Mexico has five years to deliver its share.

He explained that, in the first year, the country was only able to deliver 75 million cubic meters, because conditions were very adverse in the Rio Grande basin. The second year it was 296.3 million. There were rains that made it possible to reduce the deficit in deliveries and currently, in the third year of the cycle, 36 million have been delivered.

Two years after the end of the cycle, a cyclone or hurricane is expected to reach the dams to meet all the water needs in the region, he established. Work is also being done on projects to make better use of the water and the installation of a desalination plant in Reynosa is being analyzed, actions that will serve to improve the conduction of the liquid in the Rio Grande.

Gutiérrez Ramírez indicated that as of January 21, according to the Cila, the international dams had recovered their storage levels. Now the Amistad reservoir is 44 percent filled and Falcón 22 percent, although it reached 7 percent.

He added that Mexico in the Falcón dam reduced extractions from 9.1 to 7.8 cubic meters per second and the United States increased it from 21.4 to 29.2 cubic meters per second, due to its irrigation needs.