‘With What Water?’

Alonso Monta ez killed the outboard and the boat swung against the scum and trash that had accumulated in the stagnant water on the high side of the dam Escucha he disclosed gesturing at the surface of the lake In the quiet we heard water slapping the hull a life jacket buckle pinging on a metal pole Listen he reported again You can hear the force of it no The sound was imperceptible at first But soon enough it emerged swelling upward from the murky emerald depths beneath our little boat The sound was like an enormous rainstick held underwater Monta ez muscle-bound in a tight blue t-shirt explained we were hearing the sediment-infused water of La Boquilla Reservoir sluicing into the dam s gigantic outlets That s not something you want to hear he declared Our boat drifted closer to the dam s wall a mighty concrete curtain pressed between two desert peaks Monta ez pointed out six gates each about feet wide the tops poking out just above the water s surface These were the reservoir s outlets Under normal conditions Monta ez narrated me they would be far below the lake s surface You should never be able to see these he declared This dam was not designed for the water to get this low Monta ez is a tour boat operator and fisherman on La Boquilla Reservoir the largest reservoir in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua and a body of water whose drastically dwindling supply portends ever-more hardship for the drought-stricken Rio Grande Never in the history of Mexican National Water Commission records has La Boquilla plunged to its present levels The day we motored up to the dam September the reservoir had sunk to percent of its quota This May the reservoir sat at percent La Boquilla impounds the water of the Rio Conchos the largest tributary of the Rio Grande With a threshold of more than million acre-feet enough in other words to submerge million acres of land in a foot of water La Boquilla can be thought of as a gigantic storage tank perched at a high point in a complex binational river system If the lake lacks water the river below it dries And a dried-up Rio Conchos signals distress and political tensions extending throughout northern Chihuahua and all along Mexico s frontier with Texas Historically the Rio Conchos served as Mexico s greater part reliable workhorse for delivering water to Texas in accordance with a treaty negotiated by the United States and Mexico in But it s become increasingly apparent that decades of megadrought and overexploitation have ridden the old river nearly to death The desiccation of the Rio Conchos is partly to blame for unprecedented water shortages experienced by Rio Grande Valley farmers in South Texas that threaten an annual agricultural financial sector estimated at million In February South Texas last sugar mill shuttered heralding the death of an industry the blame for which a multitude of have laid at the feet of Mexico for failing to meet its treaty obligations But the Rio Conchos also flows as the lifeblood for hundreds of thousands of northern Chihuahua residents They tap the river and its associated groundwater for domestic use They turn to the Rio Conchos as a ribbon of wildlife habitat in an otherwise parched desert And they depend upon the river for a regional economic activity propped precariously atop irrigated agriculture La Boquilla Reservoir Eduardo Talamantes Trapped between the treaty and the drought numerous Conchos Valley residents find themselves in an increasingly dire situation As one Mexican farmer explained me When the water goes down everything goes down with it Amid growing tensions and looming uncertainty a question lingers over the Texas-Mexico borderlands What s going on upriver in Mexico s Rio Conchos watershed Seeking answers I traveled for three weeks up the Conchos Valley in the summer of I returned to the region known in Chihuahua as the Centro Sur in the fall of and lived there for three months During these visits I interviewed dozens of farmers water managers fishermen river advocates and everyday residents Plenty of notified me they would fight for their water to the very last drop Others however have already begun asking the existential question Where will we go when the river runs dry On a -degree day in late May of I drove with Eduardo Talamantes down an agricultural backroad paralleling the Rio Conchos A photographer for the City of Camargo Chihuahua Talamantes insisted that I take a look at a place called Las Pilas a set of large diversion gates that lay across the river near the municipality of San Francisco de Conchos not far from La Boquilla Reservoir Las Pilas will give you a clear picture of what s going on here Talamantes informed me as the dirt road guided us through rural villages of adobe churches and cinder-block homes Arriving we parked beside a bridge and looked upriver at a swollen fast-flowing stretch of the Rio Conchos It was surprising to see so much water in a landscape famous for its aridity The river corridor was lush with willows and cottonwoods But when all that water reached Las Pilas the diversion gates shunted its flow into a concrete-lined canal This canal about the width of two school buses parked end-to-end is known as el canal principal Just below the headgates the Rio Conchos dried entirely its full flow having been carried off Talamantes pointed across the bridge at two wrecked pickups discarded near the canal s rim In these trucks were set ablaze burnt to a crisp and left to moulder in the blistering sun Right on this bridge Talamantes stated me This is where the showdown happened He referred to a rebellion that erupted across the region in The protests pitted thousands of Conchos Valley farmers against the Mexican federal authorities and Guardia Nacional in a conflict over international waters At Las Pilas the standoff involved farmers fighting to open the canal s headgates so that water would flow to their pecan and alfalfa fields instead of down the Rio Conchos and onward to the U S -Mexico frontier Talamantes had been there that day photographing the upheaval He narrated me farmers and National Guard members clashed on the bridge bodies pounding against thick plastic shields bottles of flaming gasoline hurtling through the air Protesters throw rocks in Eduardo Talamantes Las Pilas was but one flash-point in a wider conflagration that engulfed the entire Centro Sur region The Water Treaty sat at the center of the rebellion Every five years the treaty requires Mexico to deliver million acre-feet of water to Texas That works out to about acre-feet a year The treaty stipulates that Mexico make its deliveries down six named Rio Grande tributaries the Conchos San Diego San Rodrigo Escondido and Salado rivers and the Las Vacas Arroyo In the last time that water was due farmers from northern Chihuahua s sprawling irrigation districts took to the streets with sticks and Molotov cocktails They burned buildings in Delicias and Camargo They flipped trucks and set them ablaze One protester was shot and killed Others were wounded when members of the National Guard opened fire at Las Pilas not far from where we were standing The farmers nevertheless seized control of La Boquilla Dam and occupied it for weeks staring down armed officers and forcing Mexico to find its treaty waters elsewhere In the years since the core issues that sparked the unrest drought and treaty obligations have persisted Mexico s water bill comes due again this year But this time the nation is even deeper in arrears As of April more than four and a half years into the five-year delivery cycle the country had sent only percent of its treaty water That same month the borderlands water predicament caught the White House s attention President Donald Trump accused Mexico of stealing water in a social media post and threatened to punish the country with higher tariffs if they didn t pay down their water debt In response Mexico publicized a joint agreement with the United States to transfer reserved water to Texas held in the binational Falcon and Amistad reservoirs which respectively bestride the Rio Grande near the Starr-Zapata county line and Del Rio Mexico also promised through October to give the United States half rather than the typical third of its water flowing down the Rio Grande and the six key tributaries With these concessions Mexico will still likely end this cycle about acre-feet in arrears the largest water deficit Mexico has carried from one five-year cycle to the next since the s That s why Texas continues to pressure the region to send the rest of the water owed When I returned to the Rio Conchos region in the fall of I assumed the Valley s farmers would be ramping up for another fight If water deliveries were further behind than during the protests surely the Centro Sur was set for a repeat bout of civil unrest As it happens my assumptions were wrong Farmers had no plans to protest They informed me there was no need I would learn this was largely because drought had already done away with what prompted the rebellions in the first place water The headquarters of SRL Unidad Conchos where I sat down with Rogelio Ortiz occupy a peach-colored building in an agro-industrial zone of Delicias Chihuahua Until early Ortiz was director of the group an agricultural association for Distrito de Riego the state s largest irrigation district Ortiz explained that Delicias home to about was founded in the s as an agricultural city The irrigation district and the city were born together he reported me linked by a project that would harness massive centralized water infrastructure to generate a productive agricultural class in Mexico s northern deserts El canal principal effectuated that vision The canal delivers percent of the Rio Conchos flow to an estimated farmers in Ortiz s water district These farmers plant more than half a million acres of irrigated desert in water-intensive crops like alfalfa and pecans as well as other staples such as chiles cotton onions wheat and sorghum When I first spoke with Ortiz in it was less than two years after the Valley s farmers had scored their costly but emboldening preeminence with the water protests At the rebellion s climax the Mexican federal regime acceded to farmers demands Instead of delivering water from the Rio Conchos the country had allocated its share of treaty waters far downstream on the Rio Grande To enable this the International Boundary and Water Commission IBWC which oversees these deliveries enacted an amendment to the Treaty known as Minute Minute allowed Mexico to transfer to Texas a large volume of its water stored in the binational Falcon and Amistad reservoirs With this move Mexico made good on its treaty obligations while keeping water in the Centro Sur region for farmers But it also dried up large segments of the Rio Grande including the stretch through the iconic Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park Even more concerning from Mexico s perspective transferring all that water jeopardized the country s ability to ensure adequate water supplies for communities below the binational reservoirs in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Le n Left Ortiz visits canal Right Irrigation canal runs dry Eduardo Talamantes Ortiz maintained that Conchos Valley farmers were justified in withholding deliveries to Texas The waters contained in La Boquilla and Francisco I Madero a smaller reservoir on the Rio San Pedro a tributary of the Rio Conchos are not designated treaty waters he explained The water from the dams that stays here he disclosed It doesn t go away The trouble in is that they longed to take it out of the dam And there yes there is a difficulty This interpretation widespread among farmers in the Centro Sur region maintains the treaty only has jurisdiction over aguas broncas or wild waters This refers to water that seeps or spills from northern Chihuahua s reservoirs water generated by rainfall below the Mexican dams or water that returns to the Rio Conchos as irrigation runoff Under that theory Rio Conchos irrigation districts had full rights to most of water stored in their reservoirs Ortiz notified me and the Mexican federal authorities had no power to force them to deliver that water to Texas Mexico has typically relied on the Rio Conchos for making between and percent of its obligated treaty water deliveries depending on the decade On the one hand this frustrates a multitude of Conchos Valley farmers The Mexican leadership they argue unfairly forces them to pay the lion s share of Mexico s water debt On the other hand the Rio Conchos is the largest tributary in the entire Rio Grande watershed If that source dries up as is rapidly occurring it s challenging to see how Mexico could stay in compliance with the treaty In July of I put the question of the Mexican farmers treaty interpretation to Maria-Elena Giner who was IBWC commissioner until this April Was it true that water captured and stored by Mexico s dams could be withheld from the treaty Giner recognized what had long been the Rio Conchos farmers interpretation The only way they deliver water to the United States she declared is basically water that spills over the reservoirs But she also explained that this view of the treaty was increasingly problematic Climatic conditions have changed and Mexico can no longer rely on aguas broncas for deliveries The majority of contemporary five-year stretch - offered a scenario in point Mexican agricultural interests were able to capture the water she communicated me but they should have delivered more And they didn t So now we re here And where is here Much like La Boquilla Falcon and Amistad reservoirs have reached record-low levels Mexico as of late April owed the States about million acre-feet of water Mexico could carry chosen of its deficit into the next five-year cycle but the postponed debt would become enormous These problems have come to a head in the Conchos Valley Time and again I inquired farmers and water managers whether they would willingly make their deliveries to Texas They threw up their hands in what amounted to a collective shrug With what water Sergio Ogaz conservation coordinator at SRL Unidad Conchos communicated me La Boquilla was so low there would be no irrigation season for district farmers at all No water for Mexico No water for Texas We ve had only one year where irrigation was restricted to zero Ogaz stated And that was years ago That year looms large in farmers memories Not only does it mark a time when crops failed and the local financial market sundered it also reminds people of when their communities changed and their families separated as their loved ones traveled off in search of other techniques to make a living In Santa Cruz de Rosales five miles west of Delicias Alonso M rquez climbed down from a dually pickup truck hauling a trailer full of chiles and invited me to join him at a dusty desk in an office at the back of a barn A manager on a -acre farm M rquez communicated me the operation employed about people Now he lamented they re telling us we won t get any water And if there s no water we can t plant And if we can t plant we can t pay our employees Agriculture accounts for percent of the Conchos Valley financial market fetching an estimated million annually But it also consumes percent of the water used in the state The Centro Sur region s economic base thus runs on water a speedily vanishing supply A large number of people think it only affects those of us who work here M rquez noted but people in the city are also impacted If we don t make money here nobody goes to the restaurants to eat or the stores to buy Undocumented migration was the majority likely from areas experiencing extreme drought M rquez s comments touched on a recurrent theme across dozens of interviews So tightly coupled was the economic activity to agriculture and so heavily dependent was agriculture on water that the drought had already begun to insinuate itself into all segments of society affecting people from all walks of life It s the fertilizers the machinery the mechanics to fix the tractors the seed sellers all of that M rquez revealed And the ramifications rippled beyond even the secondary farming services For example Monta ez the fisherman at La Boquilla Reservoir introduced me to representatives from four fishing cooperatives These cooperatives include about families who live off selling fish they catch in the reservoir As drought and agricultural extractions depleted the vast lake fisheries collapsed Their daily catches became so sparse they could no longer afford the gas it costs to power their trucks and boats Meanwhile their settlements which used to line the edges of the lake were left stranded miles from shore These villages El Sepulvede o and El Toro used to draw domestic water directly from the lake In the current era the lake has receded so far they no longer have access to water for basic household requirements A similar dilemma threatens residents of Boquilla the colorful touristy town at the foot of the dam Boquilla takes domestic water directly from the reservoir But lowering lake levels began contaminating their water supply with sediments that have collected at the bottom during the lake s century-long existence In the fall of several residents turned on their taps for me showing dirt-filled water the color of caf con leche Back in the barn in Rosales M rquez informed me he had only seen one year as bad as this I was very young he noted It was before I worked here It was in Nothing was planted that year either M rquez grew up in a small village of particular a pueblito known as La Garita During the debilitating droughts of the mid- s the work dried up along with the water and La Garita emptied out M rquez estimated half the population migrated to el norte Plenty of homes in La Garita remain abandoned There are a multitude of countless small towns here where the people have already gotten their papers and are there in the United States M rquez narrated me When there s no work you have to look for something And those of us who stay here well we stay here talking I talk at home and the subject of migration comes up Migrating north represents a well-worn path in the Centro Sur region Since farmers possess property and can prove a long-term income countless can obtain temporary visas With these specific expedition to work during the irrigation off-season in dairies construction or Texas oil fields and they use their earnings to invest in their farms back home Prolonged drought likely intensifies this trend A inquiry published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences connects weather change with rising migration from agricultural regions in Mexico Undocumented migration was largest part likely from areas experiencing extreme drought the investigation concluded and newcomers were less likely to return to their communities of origin when extreme weather persisted Grappling with the region s unrelenting drought the IBWC just now adopted novel and controversial changes to the treaty As written the treaty obligates Mexico to deliver million acre feet every five years But it also contains an extraordinary drought provision that allows the nation to carry over a water debt into the next five-year cycle In other words whatever amount Mexico owes by October of this year the close of the current five-year cycle could be paid off in the next five-year cycle which concludes in After months of negotiation the IBWC in November passed Minute an amendment to the treaty that granted Mexico more flexibility in the timing and sources of their water deliveries Prior to Minute Mexico could transfer water out of Falcon and Amistad reservoirs but only during the next five-year cycle Minute allows Mexico to make those transfers during the current cycle As a upshot of this change South Texas farmers could begin receiving transferred water during the present irrigation season as opposed to having to wait until October During past droughts Mexico has sometimes tapped two rivers in addition to the six Rio Grande tributaries mentioned above the Rio San Juan and the Rio Alamo The new amendment allows Mexico to begin delivering water from those rivers directly without having to wait for the next cycle The IBWC contends Minute will make Mexico s deliveries more reliable and predictable But the negotiations have rankled South Texas irrigators who say the change doesn t go far enough to ensure Mexico delivers in full Mexico is in a drought commented Anthony Stambaugh general manager for Hidalgo County Irrigation District No That s accurate currently But that wasn t true for the whole five-year cycle In a major storm system traveled up the Rio Grande corridor unleashing torrential rains that filled Mexico s dams to ceiling But the country did not take that opportunity to send water to Texas We only got what they couldn t capture in their reservoirs Stambaugh commented Rosa Elva Mu iz Meza of Julimes Eduardo Talamantes Moreover the San Juan and Alamo rivers reach the Rio Grande too far downstream to be captured by Starr County s Falcon Dam at the western extreme of the Rio Grande Valley meaning downriver farmers in Hidalgo and Cameron counties contend they cannot capture that water for irrigation even though Mexico is credited for delivering it IBWC hydrologists pushed back against that claim in a December citizens forum saying water from these rivers can be retained at Hidalgo County s Anzalduas Dam but Stambaugh stated me that is a diversion dam not meant for irrigation storage For all the blame and attention placed on Mexico s Rio Conchos South Texas water depletions reflect a much broader binational obstacle ex-IBWC Commissioner Giner explained In South Texas they re so focused on Mexico s water rather than water from Texas tributaries because that s the only number they know To counteract this the IBWC in recent weeks launched a binational water-accounting effort The plan measures all tributaries whose waters make it into Falcon and Amistad thus giving water users a fuller panorama Even in the wettest of the past four decades - the Rio Conchos never contributed more than percent of the water allocated to the United States at Falcon and Amistad reservoirs according to IBWC statistics That same details shows a steady downtrend in volumes from all sources over the last years including significant U S tributaries of the Rio Grande such as the Pecos and Devils rivers as well as numerous unnamed springs and tributaries in Texas In South Texas your issue is not just Mexico s water Giner stated You ve got a lot of problems with U S tributaries too And so they really need to coalesce in South Texas and find those efficiencies To enter the Mexican pueblo of Julimes you drive across a high bridge that spans the Rio Conchos above an open dale of flood-irrigated pecan orchards and hayfields In I met with a group of women there who had established a civil association around the defense of agricultural water Calling themselves Las Adelitas the group formed in the throes of the rebellion Their name popularly describes women who fought to encouragement the Mexican Revolution in the early s La Adelita a famous Mexican folk song was likely inspired by a real woman fighter from Ju rez By the group from Julimes had changed their name to Las Valentinas after another revolutionary woman These Valentinas linked their struggle to keep water in Mexico to the romanticized ethos of the revolution My husband had to migrate to the U S explained Rosa Elva Mu iz Meza a Valentina I was left here with everything I was left with the children in school with what little we planted and with the dairy cows which is what we lived on Mu iz s husband migrated in the s because the drought had gotten so bad the family feared they would lose their farm Like multiple emigrants from the Centro Sur her husband never intended to permanently leave Mu iz emphasized He was migrating in order to keep his family in place Her husband has since returned But the dairy portion of their farm has shuttered Now both her young-adult children reside north of the Rio Grande Those of us who live here have a lot of family who ve migrated Mu iz communicated me A lot It s how we get ahead how we sustain ourselves But it s also very hard to live apart Migration and the fight to defend water are cut from the same strategic cloth reported Eliza Cardona a Valentina from Julimes Farmers seek to cling to their land their lives and their tenuous place in a drought-stricken world We separated our families for years Cardona revealed but this is how multiple small farmers have survived Now they want to take away our little pieces of land where we have worked where we have endured So you can imagine our fight for water With teeth shovels sticks and rosaries we fight those who want to take from us The post With What Water 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