Gov. Abbott accepted Mexico’s water offer. Will it actually benefit Valley farmers?

1 week ago 19

SAN JUAN — Once again, farmers in the Rio Grande Valley are finding their hopes dashed over the prospect of being able to access water for their crops, even after a recent order by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

On Tuesday, Abbott gave state water regulators at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, a directive to accept an offer from Mexico for 120,000 acre feet of water from the Rio San Juan.

“I directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to accept a San Juan River water offer from Mexico that will supply our farmers and businesses in the Rio Grande Valley with much-needed water,” Abbott stated in a news release.

The governor added that Mexico has been blatantly abusing and disregarding a 70-year-old binational water sharing agreement that obligates the United States and Mexico to share water resources in the Rio Grande and Colorado River watersheds, which bisect both nations.

Within hours of the governor’s announcement, officials at the TCEQ released a similar statement saying the agency would accept Mexico’s offer of water from the Rio San Juan, which meets the Rio Grande just a few miles north of Rio Grande City’s city limits.

But that outfall location lies far downstream from the Falcon International Reservoir, one of two international reservoirs that serve the municipal and agricultural water needs not only in South Texas, but in the northern Mexican border states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.

At first blush, it seemed that Abbott had at last taken heed of the myriad desperate cries from Valley farmers who have already taken thousands of acres of land out of production due to a worsening water crisis here.

Officials with the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC, first revealed the offer last month, during an Oct. 18 meeting between the TCEQ, the IBWC and dozens of local water stakeholders.

But at time, TCEQ Commissioner Bobby Janecka warned Valley water managers that accessing the water could be illegal since TCEQ didn’t have a way to track any water diversions that water rights holders made.

Neither Texas nor border Mexican water users have any way to store water that comes into the Rio Grande from the Rio San Juan.

As a result, that water is only beneficial when it can be pumped from the Rio Grande in real time as the flows head inexorably downstream into the Gulf of Mexico.

And it’s because of the inability to capture or store Rio San Juan water, which has historically not counted toward Mexico’s water delivery obligations — until now.

Earlier this month, the United States and Mexico agreed to a sort of amendment to the 1944 water sharing treaty called a “minute.”

Minute 331, signed in Ciudad Juarez on Nov. 7, gives Mexico new avenues for fulfilling its delivery obligations, including getting credit for volumes of water released from the Rio San Juan.

Mexico’s current offer won’t help much — 120,000 acre-feet is just one-tenth the volume of water that the Valley’s agriculture industry consumes each year — but it would be something, according to longtime water manager and water advocate for Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2, Sonny Hinojosa.

Instead, the governor’s announcement has resulted in little more than false hope, especially since TCEQ continues to maintain its position about the legality of diverting the water.

“Due to the immediate water needs of farmers and cities along the lower Rio Grande, Texas accepts the offer, pending TCEQ finalizing operational procedures for the acceptance of Mexico’s offer,” the TCEQ stated in a Tuesday news release.

In other words, despite Abbott’s directive, Valley farmers still can’t touch the water yet.

For the TCEQ, the agency must be able to reconcile the accounts of water rights holders, and there’s no mechanism for them to do that downstream of the reservoirs.

Water accounts work in a very similar fashion to a checking account. As a water rights holder “withdraws” water, that volume of water is deducted from their account, which is made up of water stored behind the Falcon and Amistad dams.

But, unlike a checking account, if a water rights holder has withdrawn all the water in their account, there are no safety nets like overdraft protection.

As such, advocates like Hinojosa have been pleading with the governor’s office and the TCEQ to allow farmers to divert the Rio San Juan water at “no charge” — at no impact to their account balances.

But Janecka fears that could lead to repercussions from Texas water users located upstream.

On Thursday, Janecka, along with officials from the IBWC’s American and Mexican counterparts, attended a webinar about the binational water issue called the State of the Rio Grande Symposium.

There, Janecka addressed a question about what will happen to the water from Mexico’s offer — specifically about allowing farmers and irrigation districts to access it at no charge.

“I’m not aware of a path yet that there’s any opportunity to do it fully at no charge,” Janecka said.

“Because it is in exchange for (treaty) credit, we’re not aware of an easy way to accept that credit, honor the credit, pass it directly onto the users. So, I don’t want to create a false expectation that that’s gonna be one of the options there still at play,” he added.

The commissioner added that the Rio Grande watermaster — the TCEQ official who is responsible for tracking water rights accounts — will issue an order addressing Rio San Juan water “as soon as possible.”

For farmers, the glimmer of hope they may have felt at the governor’s announcement on Tuesday has once again been all but distinguished as state bureaucracy continues to hinder their access to the water.

While TCEQ continues to maintain that the water is untouchable, the agency has also been disingenuous in how it characterizes Mexico’s water availability.

“Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas are retaining upwards of 120% of their capacity,” the TCEQ stated.

“Since Mexico continues to disregard its Treaty obligations while enjoying historic surpluses, Mexico must quickly enact the tools within Minute 331,” the agency further stated.

But those surpluses exist at just two of the eight Mexican reservoirs that supply the Rio Grande — the El Cuchillo and Marte Gomez dams, which lie along the Rio San Juan that, in turn, flows downstream of Falcon Dam.

Further inland, six other Mexican reservoirs are also experiencing historic and catastrophically low volumes of water, including those along the Rio Conchos, which is the single largest contributor to the Rio Grande.

And though the state water regulator is urging Mexico to make use of the new tools made available under Minute 331 of the 1944 treaty, that suggestion seems to be at odds with the governor.

The new minute empowers the U.S. to credit Mexico for water released from the Rio San Juan. But Abbott rebuked that idea in his statement Tuesday.

“While the International Boundary and Water Commission apparently takes the position that water from the San Juan River may be credited against Mexico’s five-year Treaty commitments, Texas stands firm in its position—consistent with the text of the Treaty—that those commitments may be satisfied only with water from the six named tributaries,” the governor’s news release stated.

That’s left Valley farmers in limbo, according to Hinojosa, the water advocate.

“Gov. Abbott has directed TCEQ to accept the water and leaves it up to them to work out the administrative procedures to accomplish the diversion of that water,” Hinojosa said.

“I think IBWC will credit Mexico, but we still have that accounting issue on the TCEQ side and the Rio Grande watermaster’s side that hasn’t been resolved yet,” he said.

Hinojosa added that, as of Wednesday, none of his industry colleagues had heard from the TCEQ about the governor’s order. And that continued delay means farmers will have to sit out another growing season.

“We’re just frustrated. We need this water to be at no charge to our accounts,” Hinojosa said.

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