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No Water South of the Río Bravo |
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By Diego Cevallos *
Mexico will have to spend approximately 1.5 billion dollars over the next five years to maintain the water supplies of cities and farmland bordering the United States.
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's northern region, bordering the United States, suffers yet another challenge on top of the illegal drug trade, widespread violence and massive migration: water shortages.
As a result of an eight-year drought, the zone has accumulated a debt of 1.7 billion cubic meters of water with the United States and must invest approximately 1.5 billion dollars over the next five years to avoid shortages both in the country and in the cities.
The problems will only get worse, warn the authorities, if water is not managed more efficiently in the rural areas along the 3,300-km border, where consumption rates are the equivalent of 80 percent of the hydro-resources available in the region.
A large portion of the water the northern Mexicans use comes from the Colorado River and the Río Bravo (also known as Río Grande), both of which flow along the international border and whose watersheds are shared by the two countries, according to a treaty signed in 1994. Some environmentalists believe this legal instrument is unfair and should be revised, but others say it benefits Mexico.
The water management problems in the border area remained hidden until 1992 because reserves were maintained at an annual average of 5.1 billion cubic meters, more than enough to feed complacent attitudes toward this resource.
But when the average dropped below 2.3 billion cubic meters, the faults became evident, while farmers began demanding more and more water - a resource that they, unlike their neighbors in the United States, exploit without much prudence or technology.
''It's obvious that when there was abundance - though inefficiency - everything was fine. But now nature has taken that from us so we must learn to live another way,'' Jaime Tinoco, Northern Border delegate for Mexico's National Water Commission, told Tierramérica.
The United States is and has been relatively efficient in using water resources, both in the countryside and in the cities, but on this side of the border it has been a different story, Tinoco acknowledged.
Mexico's inefficiency in crop irrigation is 50 percent and, in urban areas, a full one-third of water is wasted, according to government data.
Environment Secretary (minister) Víctor Lichtinger stressed that it is essential to fight water inefficiency in Mexico's farming areas because management of this vital resource is ''a matter of national security,'' says the government.
Meanwhile, in border states like Tamaulipas, farmers are pleading for meteorological forecasts to become reality, that the climatic phenomenon known as El Niño will return and bring with it the desperately needed rains.
The long drought has eliminated 20 percent of the total livestock herd of Tamaulipas and state authorities are refusing to pay for a portion of the water it owes the United States this year. Instead they are demanding that the northern neighbor hand over rights to the watershed's flows.
Tinoco, however, pointed out that there are sites where farmers continue to use flooding as a crop irrigation method, something that in other water-starved countries would almost be considered a crime because of the waste involved.
In contrast, the Mexican cities along the border maintain 93 percent accessibility to potable water, a proportion much higher than in other parts of the country, but short of the 100 percent coverage registered in the neighboring US cities.
To improve coverage and to create the appropriate infrastructure for drainage and urban sanitation would require an outlay of more than a billion dollars over the next five years, according the North American Development Bank.
The National Water Commission, meanwhile says the countryside would need another 522 million dollars invested during that same period to ensure optimum water supplies.
Experts say it will be difficult to meet those goals. In the last four years, and despite major efforts, spending on the Mexican side to ensure water supplies and quality was just 370 million dollars.
But not all news is discouraging. The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC/CILA), which in 1992 pointed out the infrastructure and pollution problems plaguing the area's water supply, has recorded an improvement in the situation - the result of treatment plants and other works in Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo, Jesús Luévano, IBWC/CILA secretary, told Tierramérica.
IBWC/CILA is a binational commission created to monitor and attend to the problems arising from the use of waters from the Colorado, Tijuana and Bravo (Grande) rivers that mark the Mexican-US border.
According to the border treaty, each country must provide the other with specified quantities of water each year.
The United States has complied with its part, but Mexico has been unable to, due to the drought and to the inefficient water use practices in the countryside. Now the southern neighbor holds a debt of 1.7 million cubic meters, and its northern partner is demanding payment.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent
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