South Texas congressman says Mexico will start repaying water debt 'soon'

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) -- A South Texas congressman who is part of a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers meeting with officials in Mexico City this week says Mexico intends to repay water owed to the United States very soon, Border Report has learned.

U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from McAllen who is the only lawmaker from Texas on the trip, told Border Report that the current president and president-elect both have promised to pay the water that Mexico owes South Texas.

“One of the most important topics of my conversation was getting our water repaid," Gonzalez told Border Report on Tuesday evening immediately after meeting with Mexican President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum at her transition headquarters in Mexico City.

"They've assured me that we're going to be getting our water repayments soon. Today, I brought it up with President-Elect Sheinbaum to make the recommendation so they could sign that minute 331 which gives them other tools to be able to start paying the water. So I think we're a lot closer than we've ever been," he said.

The talks come as U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans from Texas, on Tuesday filed legislation that would sanction Mexico in the future if it faults on water payments.

Cruz and Cornyn were not part of the delegation in Mexico City, which included lawmakers from Arizona, Indiana, Delaware and California.

Gonzalez says the delegation met for three hours on Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the presidential palace. And he says AMLO also assured them that Mexico would pay back the water it is vastly behind during this 5-year cycle, according to a 1944 international water treaty.

Under the treaty, Mexico is supposed to pay 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the United States every five years. That's an average of 350,000 acre feet per year. The current cycle ends in October 2025 and Mexico has barely paid one year's worth of water, according to the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission.

The water is necessary to bolster the Rio Grande, which supplies drinking and agriculture water for millions of people and farms along the South Texas border.

Texas' only sugar mill shut down in February in Santa Rosa, a small farming community on the border in Hidalgo County, costing 500 jobs. Hidalgo County has declared a disaster declaration due to the shrinking Rio Grande, and citrus farmers up and down the border are worried they won't have enough water for their trees.

The change to the minute in the treaty that Gonzalez and others are pushing would allow Mexico to pay water directly to South Texas -- not two-thirds to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas first, as currently stipulated in the 1944 treaty.

IBWC U.S. Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner has been touting this change and had been confident that Mexico would sign on to it late last year. But Mexico backed out and all communications seemed to indicate that nothing would be decided until after the country's presidential elections.

Sheinbaum is the country's first elected woman president and will take office on Oct. 1.

The legislation filed Tuesday by Cornyn and Cruz, if passed, would amend the National Defense Authorization Act and would require the U.S. Secretary of State to annually report to Congress the amount of water paid by Mexico. If payment levels fall below 350,000 acre-feet, then sanctions in the form of cuts to loans would be enacted. That would include:

“Texas farmers and cities are suffering because Mexico has consistently failed to uphold its end of the bargain and provide Texans with the water they count on in the framework of the 1944 Water Treaty. This amendment strengthens the treaty by introducing measures the Secretary of State must and can take to ensure Mexico provides predictable and reliable deliveries. This new framework is essential to ensuring such deliveries," Cruz said.

The senators say they are tired of waiting for Mexico to deliver water it has faulted on for repeated cycles over the decades.

“For years, Sen. Cruz, the Texas congressional delegation and I have been urging the State Department to diplomatically engage with Mexico to ensure they fulfill their obligations under the 1944 Water Treaty. This bill complements another effort we have in the Appropriations Committee by taking our work to the next level and imposing punitive action against our southern neighbor, whose continued delays and inaction are hurting the livelihoods of farmers, ranchers, and producers throughout South Texas," Cornyn said.

Gonzalez, however, tells Border Report that forcing sanctions is not the way to get Mexico to pay it's water debt. He says talks are.

"It's a struggle, right? But this is the right channel to actually get things done. It's through a diplomatic channel," Gonzalez said.