AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Local officials and farmers in South Texas traveled to the Capitol Monday to ask lawmakers to get involved with holding Mexico accountable to an 80-year-old treaty that provides water to the region.
“We’re in dire straits right now,” Brian Jones explained. Jones is a fourth generation farmer from Hidalgo County who grows cotton, corn, grain sorghum and soybeans. He is also a state director for the Texas Farm Bureau representing South Texas counties.
For the past three years he has only been able to plant half of his farm because he does not have enough water to take care of his entire farm. It’s not just him but farmers all along the Rio Grande Valley.
“We just don’t have enough water to take care of what we normally farm,” Jones said. He said Mexico continues to fall behind on the amount of water it is supposed to release to the United States. According to a treaty signed in 1944 between the two countries, Mexico is required to release 350,000 acre-feet annually in five-year cycles.
The next five-year cycle ends in October 2025 and state leaders say Mexico is currently behind 984,814 acre-feet.
Economic and public health impacts
Jones said farmers in the RGV will not be able to produce as much crop as they are accustomed to. This will lead to less Texas products in local grocery stores that will have to be replaced by products from either other states or other countries like Mexico.
The lack of production also means a major loss in revenue for the region. The last operating sugar mill in Texas had to close its doors because of the lack of water. The mill employed about 600 people, Jones said.
According to a report from Texas A&M AgriLife, the “lack of irrigation water for crop production in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in 2024 would be about $495.8 million in direct revenue loss.”
But local officials also warn the water dispute between the U.S. and Mexico will lead to a public health crisis for local municipalities that rely on it for drinking water. “If this continues, drinking water for cities like Brownsville, McAllen, Harlingen will be at risk, leading to conservation mandates, potential rationing, and a public health crisis,” Mark Dombroski, the COO of Brownsville Public Utilities, testified to Texas Senators on Monday.
A water session
During testimony from experts and farmers on Monday, Texas Senators were able to ask questions about the issue. State Senator Nathan Johnson, D – Dallas, pointed out that only 30% of the water used in the RGV comes from Mexico.
He also pointed out that the RGV is in a regional drought and loses 500 acre-feet of water annually. “Even if we solve that problem, we’ve only solved 30% of the problem,” Johnson said. “We still need water from Texas to Texas, and I think we should keep sight on that because if we spend all our time getting angry at Mexico, we’ve solved 30% of the problem.”
State Senator Charles Perry, R – Lubbock, followed up those comments saying the drought is part of the problem, but that Mexico had also not delivered water before the drought. He also agreed with Johnson that the state will have to do more this session to solve the state’s water crisis. Gov. Greg Abbott said during his State of the State address he wanted a “Texas-sized investment on water.”
“This is a water session. This is when we put things in place that 10 or 20 years from now we look back and say this was when that got solved,” Perry said.
Help from the federal government
Texas congressmen at the federal level have been working to ensure Mexico complies with the 1944 Treaty.
During a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. John Cornyn, R – Texas, asked then U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the water dispute with Mexico.
“I would just like to get your commitment to work with us to try to just simply get Mexico to live up to its requirements under the treaty, and if they won’t do it voluntarily, to look for leverage and ways we can persuade them to do what they already have a legal obligation to do, which is to release water on a timely basis,” Cornyn said.
“Absolutely… It has real implications not just for the state of Texas, but broadly for the United States,” Rubio responded.
Cornyn also led a letter sent to the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on State and Foreign Operations asking them to withhold designated funds from Mexico until it entered into an agreement to balance the deficit of the water deliveries.
