Uhlhorn: Giner has been the best commissioner IBWC ever had

SANTA ROSA, Texas – Although Rio Grande Valley sugar growers are upset that a 1944 US-Mexico water sharing treaty has been adhered to, they do not blame the head of the US section IBWC.

IBWC stands for the International Boundary and Water Commission. It is a binational entity that, among other things, governs the distribution of water along the Rio Grande.

“I would like to point out that the IBWC Commissioner, Dr. Maria-Elena Giner has been the most communicative, the most supportive and the biggest advocate that South Texas has ever had in my history with them,” said Tudor Uhlhorn, chairman of the board of directors for Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., a co-operative comprising more than 90 sugarcane growing farms.

“At the IBWC she (Giner) has been fantastic in fighting for water for us. But she can only do what she can do without the proper support for the State Department. Their (the IBWC’s) ultimate bosses are the United States State Department. So without pressure from them (the State Department) on Mexico, she’s pretty limited. But she’s been great.”

Ron Whitlock Reports secured an in-depth interview with Uhlhorn soon after RGVSGA decided to close its sugar harvesting, grinding and milling operation at the end of the season. As a result hundreds of jobs will be lost and the Valley economy will take a $100 million hit. 

Uhlhorn said the decision to close the mill in Santa Rosa was a lack of reliable irrigation water. If Mexico had releasing water from the Conchos River Basin to the Rio Grande, as per the terms of 1944 treaty, Uhlhorn said, the sugar industry in the Valley could have been saved.

This reporter put it to Uhlhorn that the late Kika De La Garza would be spinning in his grave at the thought of the sugar mill closing. The Valley congressman chaired the US House Committee on Agriculture for many years.

“I’m old enough to have worked with Kika and one of the first things I ever did was testify in front of the House Ag Committee in Washington when he was chairman and certainly, we miss him,” Uhlhorn said.

“The State Department… I’ve met with the State Department multiple times over the last 30 years and it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a Republican administration that’s in office, or a Democratic administration that’s in office. The State Department is sort of self sustaining in that there’s not a lot of turnover there. And the way they interpret the treaty doesn’t change. And so there always seems to be something more important than the citizens of South Texas with regard to that treaty with Mexico. Right now we’ve got the immigrant crisis. We’ve got the cartel situation. Lots of other high level issues that the United States is dealing with Mexico on and we always seem to fall to the bottom of that list.” 

IBWC Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner

Uhlhorn started the interview by explaining the rationale for closing the sugar mill.

“We rely on a water treaty with Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley for basically 100 percent of our municipal and irrigation water coming from the Rio Grande. In the past two years, Mexico has failed to meet its delivery expectations from the Rio Conchos into the Rio Grande, despite having adequate water to do so. That’s put all of Valley agriculture in a real bind. But it especially puts the sugar mill in a real bind because without irrigation water our growers have had to reduce acreage,” Uhlhorn said.

Uhlhorn said that in the 2022/23 season the Valley’s sugar growers had about 32,000 acres of sugarcane growing. “With that amount of sugarcane we can we can make it work.”

Then, in 2023/24, which is the crop the sugar growers just finished harvesting, the acreage dropped to about 18,000 acres. 

“Actually, the acres that we were able to harvest was only around 16,000-something and we felt like with the good prices that we have right now we could we could make some money at that 16,000 acres of cane to harvest based on sugar expectations,” Uhlhorn said.

“But the dry weather that we’ve had and not having enough irrigation water for a lot of this cane, our sugar per ton expectations were not met this year. And so when we looked at that situation, with no water coming in by February the 8th, our growers had plowed out acres to where now there was only 10,000 acres in the ground left.”

Uhlhorn said he and other sugar growers attended a February 8 meeting in Mercedes with the IBWC.

“They made a presentation about the current situation and all their operations along the Rio Grande. It became evident that Mexico was not going to sign the new Minute to the treaty that everyone had been expecting. We had been told to expect that in December of 2023 and that never happened and still hasn’t happened,” Uhlhorn said.

“But even if they signed a new Minute, that’s not going to get us enough water soon enough such that the 10,000 acres that we had left… there was no way to make the mill economically viable. And we can’t skip a year because of the capital intensive nature of operating a sugar mill. So, really the decision was made for us.

“With no water from Mexico for two years and no prospect for getting any this year, an orderly liquidation of the business was the only way to do it.”

Uhlhorn was quick to point out that the co-operative had not reached a cashflow crunch.

“You know, this is not a liquidity crisis. We have plenty of cash. We’re current on all our loans and with all our vendors. And as of January 31, we had $35 million in cash and cash equivalents. So it’s not a liquidity situation. It’s just a recognition of without water we’re not viable.”

Job losses

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Asked how many workers would be losing their jobs, Uhlhorn said:

“The seasonal employees, those are the ones that work during the harvesting and grinding season, that’s about 325 to 350 employees. They sign on as a seasonal employee. They are either a tractor driver or a truck driver or a harvester operator. Those types of jobs and every year, we hire those people in October and at the end of the season they’re let go. So that’s the normal process. So, let’s call that 350 people.

“Then we have another 150 people that are full time employees. We’ve notified them and they’ll be working for another little over two months to allow them time to try to find other employment or do what they need to do. And we’re working to try to get them whatever assistance they might need.”

Uhlhorn confirmed that a lot of these workers live close to the mill, in the small towns of Santa Rosa, Edcouch and La Villa.

“Obviously, the impact to the surrounding communities will will be the biggest: Santa Rosa, Edcouch, La Villa. But, we’ve got employees basically from all over the Valley here. These are trained people that are specialized in their jobs and so they basically come from all over. We’ve got employees from Raymondville, from Harlingen, McAllen, Edinburg, from all over.

Asked about the economic impact of the sugar industry in the Valley, Uhlhorn said:

“When we had 30,000 to 35,000 acres, our budget was around $100 million a year for everything. So it’s very significant impact. It’s just a sad day for all of us.”

1944 Treaty

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As the interview continued, Uhlhorn returned to his criticism of the State Department. He believes the department could and should have been putting more pressure on Mexico to honor its water treaty obligations.

“We’ve met with the State Department numerous times to impress upon them how critical Mexico’s adherence to the terms of the treaty is and in July of 2022, we were all… Mexico, in the Conchos Valley, and Texas, we were all in about the same situation. We were very short on water. We were down into the 20 percent range on the international reservoirs, and they were down to about 20 percent on their 11 interior reservoirs, eight of which have been constructed since the treaty was signed in 1944. 

“When a tropical depression came through and grazed the Valley on the Mexico side… in the first or second week of August 2022… it went up into the Conchos River Basin and they picked up 2.3 million acre feet of water into their reservoirs. So they went from 20 percent of their capacity to 70 percent of their capacity in the interior reservoirs in Mexico. And we went from about 22 percent to about 34 percent in the international reservoirs; (that’s) because they can’t catch everything that falls in there and what they can’t catch is considered, the term is wild water. That’s the water that reaches the Conchos River and eventually flows into the Rio Grande near Presidio, Texas. 

“That’s our watershed for this area, the Conchos (River) Basin. So in the treaty, the 1944 Treaty, the Colorado River and the Lower Rio Grande are parts of that treaty. And the water we deliver to Mexico from the Colorado River, the source of that water is from the United States. It’s snowmelt in the mountains of Colorado. So we provide water to Mexico. The other part of the treaty is… Mexico has to supply South Texas and the other water users on the Lower Rio Grande water from the Conchos which is in Mexico. It’s the big river, it’s the big hoss that provides us the water.

“We’re supposed to get a third of the flows that come in along that river. They come in at Presidio and are 1/3. It is not to be less than an average of 350,000 acre feet per year over a five year cycle. So one 1.75 million acre feet over this five year cycle. We’re currently in the fourth year of the cycle that began on October 25, 2020 and Mexico has only delivered about one year’s worth of water, or slightly over that. I think it’s 377,000 acre feet. One year would be 350,000 acre feet. So that’s despite the them picking up 2.3 million acre feet of that water that they captured in their reservoirs. Not a single drop was released to fulfill their obligation to Texas, to the United States. We just got what they couldn’t catch.”

The front cover of the 1944 US-Mexico Water Treaty.

Uhlhorn said Mexico has greatly expanded its irrigated acreage in Chihuahua since the 1944 treaty was signed. “They’ve added eight additional dams in that time period. And so they’re able to capture much more of that water that used to flow freely into the Conchos.”

Uhlhorn also pointed out that it is not just the farmers in the Valley that suffer if the terms of the 1944 treaty are not honored. He said farmers in Tamaulipas affected.

“The obligation to the United States is 350,000 acre feet per year on average. That’s our one third. That means two thirds should be going to Tamaulipas. So Tamaulipas should be getting 700,000 acre feet. So what Chihuahua is obligated to deliver annually as an average is not 350,000 acre feet. It’s 1,050,000 acre feet. And so Tamaulipas suffers along with us. But, they get twice as much water into their account as we do.

“We get 100 percent of the water that flows into the Rio Grande from the tributaries on our side which is primarily the Pecos River and the Devil’s River and because of the drought in Texas, those those rivers are not contributing very much. But the shortage of water from the Conchos affects not only us but also the growers across from the Rio Grande Valley in Tamaulipas.”

Uhlhorn said that on January 22, Mexico started releasing about 225,000 acre feet from Amistad Dam to Falcon Dam. He said it takes about a month to move that much water.

“This is speculation on my part, but I speculate they’re moving that water so that they can use it before they sign any Minute that would require them to give a portion of it to the United States. Supposedly the latest intel on when the Minute is going to be signed… the latest promise from Mexico is that that new Minute, No. 330, would be signed in the next two weeks which will be too late for us but it might do some good for the other irrigated cropland in the Valley, cotton, corn, sorghum, vegetables, those kinds of things, citrus.”

If Mexico is withholding water from the Conchos River, why can’t the U.S. withhold water from the Colorado River, Uhlhorn was asked.

“Well, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I’ve met with the State Department on several occasions. And the State Department rejects any attempt to tie the Colorado and the Rio Grande together, even though it’s the same treaty. They don’t want to do that and the way they’ve interpreted the treaty for the last 30 years gives Mexico every benefit of the doubt that is possible.

“So, right now, the way the State Department interprets the treaty is, even though Mexico owes us, we’re in year four, and they owe us over 700,000 acre feet of water that, on average, should have been delivered, the State Department says they’re not in technical violation until the last day of the five year cycle, basically.”

A new cycle starts every time that Amistad and Falcon reach conservation level, and the last time they were at conservation level, full, was October 25 2020. So that’s what started this current cycle. 

“And it’s difficult to understand why they would interpret the treaty that way because Mexico can accumulate such a large debt by doing that and that’s what’s happening right now,” Uhlhorn said.

“If it was like a bathtub and you could pull the plug on them and drain every bit of water they (Mexico) had in storage… there are 11 dams in the interior of Mexico most of which are on the Conchos… they can’t pay it back. 

“No one in 1944 ever expected Mexico to accumulate such a huge debt that there was no way they could pay it back by the end of the fifth year. And that’s the way the State Department interprets the treaty. That there’s no technical violation until we get to the end of that fifth year and Mexico is deficient in their water deliveries.”

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