On the evening of April 10, President Donald Trump claimed Mexico was stealing water from Texas farmers in a post on Truth Social.
“Mexico OWES Texas 1.3 million acre-feet of water under the 1944 Water Treaty, but Mexico is unfortunately violating their Treaty obligation,” he wrote, referencing the 1944 Treaty for the Utilization of Waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers, which governs how the two countries share water from cross-border rivers.
“Ted Cruz has been leading the fight to get South Texas the water it is owed, but Sleepy Joe refused to lift a finger to help the Farmers. THAT ENDS NOW! I will make sure Mexico doesn’t violate our Treaties, and doesn’t hurt our Texas Farmers,” Trump continued.
During an interview with Farm Journal’s Chip Flory on AgriTalk the following morning, Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins said, “Within two hours after that Truth Social [post] going up, the people from Mexico were calling to set up a call with me this morning.”
Indeed, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, during her daily press conference Friday morning, said (as translated from Spanish by Google) “there will be an immediate delivery” of water to Texas farmers.
However, neither Mexico’s late water deliveries nor efforts to deal with the problem are anything new. Both have been going on for decades because there just isn’t enough water.
An old treaty and too little water
According to the 1944 treaty, Mexico and the U.S. must deliver certain volumes of water to one another. The U.S. must deliver 1.5 million-acre feet to Mexico from the Colorado River every year. On the other hand, Mexico must deliver 1.75 million-acre feet to the U.S. from the Rio Grande every five years.
As of April 5, Mexico had only delivered a cumulative 512,604 acre-feet during the current cycle.
However, when the 81-year-old treaty was written, it vastly overestimated the amount of water available at the time, and severely underestimated the growth in demand that we see now.
“The system doesn’t have enough water for all the users on both sides of the borders,” said Rosario Sanchez, Texas A&M AgriLife Research senior research scientist at the Texas Water Resources Institute and director of the Permanent Forum for Binational Waters. She explained that Mexico usually relies on hurricanes to get enough water in its reservoirs to fulfill the treaty requirements before the five-year cycle’s due date.
This seems to be part of Mexico’s strategy this cycle too. “We hope that the rainy season will give us more water so we can deliver more to the United States,” Sheinbaum said during an April 11 press conference.
An unsustainable pattern
Relying on increasingly uncertain weather patterns to deliver on its water obligations means Mexico often cuts it close to the five-year cycle’s deadline. This brings tensions to a boiling point on both sides.
This same dynamic played out at the end of the last five-year delivery cycle in 2020, during Trump’s first term. The Mexican government promised water deliveries would be made in that final year of the cycle. However, farmers suffering through drought in the state of Chihuahua protested, going so far as to seize the controls of a relevant reservoir in an armed standoff with government officials to prevent the deliveries. Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for action to get water to Texas farmers.
This pattern of late water deliveries from Mexico followed by cross-border tensions was called unsurprising in 2020 by binational water experts. But it is not a sustainable pattern, Sanchez said.
“Not for Texas at least. Texas cannot wait five years for Mexico to get lucky and get a hurricane to fulfill the treaty,” she said. “That is a luxury we are not willing to afford anymore.”
Long-term work on an international problem
In a response on social platform X to Trump’s Truth Social post, Sheinbaum pointed to the work of the International Boundary and Water Commission to identify mutually beneficial solutions. The group is an international body formed in 1889 with a U.S. section and a Mexican section. It is responsible for applying the boundary and water treaties between the two countries.
Among other tasks, the group also signs “minutes” for the 1944 treaty. Minutes function much like amendments and must be agreed to and signed by both governments. One of the more recent minutes, Minute 331, was signed Nov. 7, 2024, and expands options for Mexico to make water deliveries to the U.S.
“In other words, Mexico can use additional sources of water not contemplated before as possible sources of water to comply with the treaty,” Sanchez said. But the situation is difficult, she added.
“[IBWC is] taking very small steps because international negotiation is hard,” Sanchez said. “Because you’re talking about water, it’s moving water from one place to another, which means taking water from one user to another user. And we don’t have excess of water or additional sources of water.”
