By Emily Green, Cassandra Garrison, Stephen Eisenhammer
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican officials are scrambling to come up with a plan to increase the amount of water the country sends to the United States because of growing concern that President Donald Trump could drag a dispute over an 81-year-old water treaty into trade negotiations, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Under a 1944 treaty that outlines water sharing between the two countries through a network of interconnected dams and reservoirs, Mexico must send 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. from the Rio Grande every five years. An acre-foot of water is enough to fill about half an Olympic swimming pool.
The current five-year cycle is up in October, but Mexico has sent less than 30% of the required water, according to data from the International Boundary and Water Commission. Put another way, Mexico owes enough water to supply a mid-sized city for around 30 years.
Mexico contends that a historic drought fueled by climate change makes it impossible to fulfill its water commitments, a scenario for which the treaty offers leniency, allowing the water debt to be rolled over to the next five year cycle.
But that excuse has fallen on deaf ears among Texas Republicans who have publicly accused Mexico of being chronically delinquent in its water deliveries and flagrantly ignoring the treaty.
With the U.S.-Mexico relations already frayed over security, migration and tariffs, the two countries could now be on a collision course over water too, adding to Mexico’s woes as it struggles to navigate a minefield of issues with the Trump administration. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has said the country will continue negotiating with the U.S. in the coming weeks over tariffs imposed by Trump.
“It has become very political,” said one Mexican source who works on water issues and spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that there are growing concerns on the Mexican side that Trump could end the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact over the water debt and what the U.S. sees as non-compliance.
A second Mexican source with knowledge of the dispute said Mexico hopes to reach an agreement with the U.S. in the “next few weeks” in order to avoid the issue spilling into ongoing trade negotiations. But, the source added, “the expectations of the U.S. should be grounded in reality. We cannot deliver water that does not exist.”
The White House referred questions to the State Department. A State Department spokesman said the agency “continues to urge the Mexican government at the highest levels to meet its 1944 treaty obligations and ensure predictable water deliveries.”
Mexico’s presidency referred Reuters to previous comments by Sheinbaum who last week told reporters that Mexico had struggled with drought but was in discussions with the U.S. and “will comply with the treaty bit by bit.”
The disparate claims for water have dissolved into threats of lawsuits against Mexico’s federal government, both from Texas and from northern Mexican states that closely guard their water supply.
Eight sources familiar with the matter told Reuters Mexico was working to increase deliveries before the October deadline. That will likely involve enforcing a controversial amendment inserted into the treaty last year that empowers Mexican federal officials to take extra water from its states to comply with obligations, according to six of the sources.
The federal government is specifically eyeing Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas – all major grains and livestock producers – the six sources said.
In recent weeks, at least one meeting has taken place between state governments and the federal water authority discussing how to increase Mexican deliveries to the United States.
Mexico’s concern that water could become part of trade negotiations, and details of the scramble to increase deliveries, have not been previously reported.
Tension is building both with the U.S. and within Mexico.
“For Chihuahua to deliver water right now is death,” said Senator Mario Vazquez of Chihuahua, a member of the opposition PAN party and a vocal campaigner on water issues.
The executive director of Chihuahua’s water council, Mario Mata, said the state is considering legal action against the treaty amendment that gives the federal government greater authority to take water from the state, raising the prospect of standoffs.
In 2020, Mexico’s National Guard clashed with farmers at the Boquilla dam in Chihuahua over water deliveries to Texas, killing one protestor.
TENSE HISTORY
The fight over water access is the latest in a tense decades-long relationship that has at times exploded into protests and violence. The 81-year-old treaty never contemplated climate change or massive industrial and agricultural growth along the border fueled by free-trade between the two countries.
“That is the disconnect… there is pressure to continue to abide by a treaty, but there’s really no water to comply,” said Vianey Rueda, a researcher at the University of Michigan specializing in the treaty.
The treaty also requires that the U.S. deliver 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually to Mexico from the Colorado River, an obligation that the U.S. has largely fulfilled, although recent deliveries have been reduced due to severe drought, something the 1944 accord allows for.
While Mexico sends far less water to the U.S., it has struggled to fulfill its end of the bargain due to a combination of factors including droughts, poor infrastructure and growing local demand.
Politicians in the U.S. also maintain that Mexico’s growing cattle and pecan industries along the border have used up precious water, and say that Mexico’s failure to deliver its water quota devastates Texan farmers who need it for their crops.
“They are decimating our farmers while they’re building their agriculture industry and breaking the agreement under that 1944 water treaty. But no more,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox News in March.
Rollins didn’t respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Mexican officials see ample signs that the U.S. could retaliate using tariffs and other measures if Mexico doesn’t step up water deliveries. Trump has already shown a willingness to leverage trade threats to pressure Mexico to take actions on unrelated issues like fentanyl and immigration.
“I believe with President Trump in office and the new administration, we are going to get the water. Mexico is going to comply. Ignoring the treaty will no longer be an option for Mexico,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said at a press conference last month.
Tensions escalated on March 20, when the U.S. for the first time refused a request from Mexico for an emergency water delivery from the Colorado River to Tijuana, citing Mexico’s shortfalls under the 1944 treaty.
So far, one Mexican official said, Mexico has agreed to send 122,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. and is working on an option to deliver another 81,000 acre-feet. But that additional water would still mean Mexico had sent less than 40% of the water it owes under the treaty.
Even as it’s unclear whether those efforts will placate the U.S., the plan to extract more water has set off a political firestorm within Mexico, where farmers and state-level politicians in the north are furious about the prospect of the federal government forcibly taking water from them.
In those drought-stricken regions, agriculture sectors are already pressured for the scarce resource, said Raul Quiroga, Secretary of Hydraulic Resources for Social Development in Tamaulipas. In a meeting last month with federal government representatives, officials for all four impacted states protested the amendment to the treaty that allows for water under certain circumstances to be taken without their consent, Quiroga said.
State officials in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila did not respond to requests for comment.
Quiroga blamed Mexico’s failure to deliver on the country’s chronic mismanagement of water resources dating back to the 1990s. “When would Tamaulipas be willing [to give water]? Well, when we don’t need it first,” he said.
(Reporting by Emily Green, Cassandra Garrison and Stephen Eisenhammer in Mexico City; additional reporting by Leah Douglas and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington; editing by Claudia Parsons)
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