Mexico offers US water, but not enough

EL PASO

The Mexican government has offered a small installment toward repaying its water debt to the United States, but officials say isn't anywhere near the massive shortfall the country owes.

The United States is owed 1.4 million acre-feet of water in a debt that has been growing since the early 1990s. An acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons.

Jo Jo White, an irrigation district manager here, called the latest Mexican offer "a knee-jerk reaction" in the ongoing negotiations to make up the shortfall, the Venture County Times reported. White said it's a token offer to relieve some of the pressure Mexico is under.

White and several other irrigation district managers were to travel to Austin last week for talks with state officials regarding the water debt. Rio Grande Valley farmers contended that the federal government is failing to enforce a 1944 water-sharing agreement with Mexico and urged congressional action, the newspaper reported.

Last week, US officials said they received confirmation that Mexico would allocate about 92,000 acre-feet of water to the United States to pay off a part of its debt, said the article.

Some officials have urged retaliation through embargoes on Mexican crops and a holdback of the Colorado River water that the treaty requires the United States to release to Mexico, the newspaper said.

"We are not going to disregard a drop of water because we haven't been getting a drop from them (Mexico)," White said in the article. "But we need 800,000 acre-feet over the next four to five months."

White said he and many other irrigation district managers have already hit all-time lows in water levels and will soon have to turn away farmers asking for supplies.

Mexico's 92,000 acre-foot water allocation would come from reservoirs where water is held in what the governments call a "50/50 account." Mexico set the supplies aside when the 50/50 allocations were suspended in July after Mexican farmers filed a series of lawsuits in federal court to prevent the government from distributing the water to the United States, the newspaper said.

Those injunctions were lifted this week, Mexico Ambassador Alberto Szekely said.