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June 1st, 2008
Via The Los Angeles Times, an interesting look at the impact of the Colorado River’s increasingly meager flow into northern Mexico has upon millions who depend on it. As the article notes:
“…As U.S. scientists warn of a semi-permanent drought along the taxed river by midcentury, Mexico today offers a glimpse of what dry times can be like. Rationing is in effect in some areas. Farmers have abandoned crops they can no longer irrigate. Experts fear that the desert will reclaim some of the region’s most fertile land.
The Cucapa are a tiny portion of the 3 million people in northern Mexico who depend on a meager allotment of Colorado River water that was not enough when it was granted by treaty in 1944, and is far from enough now. Traversing 1,440 miles and providing water for seven of the most arid U.S. states, the Colorado River arrives here as an intermittent stream laden with sewage, fertilizer, pesticides and salts leached from farmland.…
….Dams, drought, climate change, urban growth, industrial agriculture and politics on both sides of the border are to blame, and none of those adverse conditions will reverse any time soon.
Reservoirs have been drawn down to historically low levels, and some scientists predict that under the influence of climate change, the river’s annual flow could drop by 50% over the next 40 years.
Despite heavy snowfall in the central Rocky Mountains this year, river managers in the U.S. continue to advise the states that depend on the Colorado River to prepare for water shortages within five years.
Measures to shore up U.S. reserves, meanwhile, are likely to make water even more scarce in Mexico.
For many years, Mexico has benefited from an unofficial surplus over its meager original allotment of river flow. The extra water comes from a combination of underground seepage from an unlined diversion canal in California, and storm runoff that makes its way south of the border.
The U.S. is in the process of stanching the fugitive flow by lining much of the All American Canal, a 90-mile-long irrigation ditch in California’s Imperial Valley. Plans also are underway to build a small reservoir to catch 60% to 70% of the surplus surface water before it reaches Mexico.
The extra water has been a boon to crops in the arid Mexicali Valley and a godsend to the Colorado River Delta, where the Cucapa and hundreds of other poor fishermen eke out a living. Marine biologists believe that the corvina and other fish rebounded from the brink of extinction largely as a result of periodic high flows that flushed through the mouth of the river.
Cross-border feud
…There is still much bitterness between Mexico and the U.S. over Colorado River water, which was allotted grudgingly in 1944, after the Mexican government threatened to cut off water vital to agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
That treaty gave Mexico about 10% of the Colorado’s estimated annual flow, about half of what Mexico wanted and not nearly enough to support the ensuing population boom. Only a few hundred thousand people were living in northern Mexico at the time, compared with the 3 million there now.
Over time, Mexico came to believe it was entitled to the surplus flows, so when the U.S. announced its intention to capture most of the surplus, a coalition of growers and Mexican officials sued. The U.S. Congress essentially mooted the case by exempting the water capture from all federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, invoked by the plaintiffs.
Outraged Mexican officials accused the U.S. of stealing water from the poor to fuel the growth of fancy suburbs in San Diego and Las Vegas, where much of the water is destined to go.
“The U.S. has contravened its obligations once again so that it can get more water flowing to its swimming pools and flower gardens,” said Alberto Szekely, a career ambassador with the Mexican Foreign Service and an expert on cross-border environmental issues.
U.S. officials said they spent three years trying to work out a compromise that would allow Mexico to continue receiving some water from the All American Canal. They said those efforts collapsed when Mexico filed suit.
Even the harshest critics of U.S. water policy acknowledge that Mexico bears some responsibility for the worsening water crisis. Urban growth has outstripped pipelines that lose as much as 50% of the water they carry, according to officials of Conagua, Mexico’s national water commission….”