Ratifies willingness to deliver liquid to the US, but only what is available

Alma E. Muñoz and Alonso Urrutia

La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, December 12, 2025, p. 4

Within the framework of the negotiations of the 1944 Water Treaty, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo ratified her willingness to comply with the delivery of the liquid “as much as possible”, beyond the threat of the US president, Donald Trump, to impose more tariffs on Mexico for dumping “millions of liters” untreated into the Tijuana River.

He stated that “he is uninformed” that there are two agreements to clean up the tributary. The first, he declared, “was signed with President (Andrés Manuel) López Obrador and led to the construction of a treatment plant that was built by military engineers and that is already operating.”

The second, he said, was the understanding that the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources, Alicia Bárcena, signed with the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, “they even went to Tijuana,” he noted.

Yesterday he pointed out that this scheme “has to be included in the agreement that is going to be signed” and the Americans “have to comply with expanding a treatment plant in San Diego, and they still have not done so.”

For our part, he said, “starting next year we are going to build a series of collectors and expand the treatment plant.”

After pointing out that “for many years part of Tijuana’s drainage was discharged into the Pacific,” he stated that they seek to avoid this contamination. Maybe “Trump was not sufficiently informed or I don’t know, we cannot determine the reason why he made this publication”, but there is no problem, because “there has already been an agreement for a while.”

He indicated that “beyond the five percent of the rates that (the American) raised in his publication (on Wednesday), the water that can be delivered is what can be delivered, no more can be delivered.”

It is determined, the president stated, by the rainfall in 2025 and “the amount that can be transferred and the amount that can be delivered, based on the physical infrastructure that is in place.” But there is always “our will to comply with the treaty.”

He specified that technicians from both countries continue working at the table on the water treaty with the desire to reach an agreement – ​​which he expected yesterday – “without the need to reach an issue of tariffs and other issues.”

He insisted that there must be recognition from both countries that “there were five years of drought; that Mexico has not delivered water during the five-year period is not because it did not want to, but because there was none.”

The treaty itself establishes that “if it was not delivered” in that period, “it can be done in the following five years… They are working on how long it could be done, it all depends on how much rain we have.”

At the tables, he added, it is determined according to what is established in the treaty, “how much water can be delivered and when, according to the physical possibilities and amount of water that Mexico has, without affecting human consumption or Mexican farmers.”