Action: Angry Valley farmers call for ‘uprising’ after talks fail.

By STEVE TAYLOR The Brownsville Herald

AUSTIN — The clamor for economic sanctions against Mexico in retaliation for its mounting water debt to Texas grew louder Tuesday after the latest U.S.-Mexico negotiations ended without agreement.

Furious Rio Grande Valley farmers and irrigation district managers returned from the water talks in El Paso convinced they will not get any help from Mexico over the next year.

"The negotiations were a disaster," said Gordon Hill, general manager of Bayview Irrigation District, a member of the South Texas delegation.

"We were led to believe we would get something out of the talks but Mexico simply refused to give us any new numbers or any details of a repayment plan. I think we’ve reached the end of the line. It’s time for an uprising in the Valley."

Negotiations between U.S. State Department official Dennis Linskey and Mexico’s foreign affairs adviser Alberto Szekely at the offices of the International Boundary and Water Commission in El Paso lasted all day Monday.

Afterwards, Valley farmers’ leaders and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said the time for diplomacy was over and the time for retaliatory action against Mexico had arrived.

"Mexico has had ten years to come up with a plan, and there was a clear understanding before the meeting started of what they were to bring to the table," Combs said in a press release issued late Tuesday.

"But Mexico came with nothing. Once again, Texas finds itself with no plan, no progress and more important no water."

News of the impasse was relayed to state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, who was on a fact-finding visit to Mexico City on Tuesday.

Lucio said he found a found sympathy for the plight of both Rio Grande Valley and Tamaulipas farmers in the Mexican capitol, with much of the anger directed toward Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez.

"I got support from Tamaulipas’ federal Sen. Lydia Madero Garcia, for example. She said we should continue to pound the water issue and that is what we did," said Lucio, who was accompanied on the trip by Rio Grande Valley Partnership President Bill Summers.

"We met with many top officials and I think we opened up some important new lines of communications. I think there are a lot of people here who are sensitive to the needs of South Texas and Tamaulipas farmers. The problem is the governor of Chihuahua."

A 1944 treaty requires Mexico to provide an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water to the United States each year, most of it from the Rio Conchos Basin in Chihuahua. The treaty also requires the United States has to release 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico from the Colorado River. While the United States has met its obligations, Mexico defaulted on Oct. 2 and now owes around 1.5 million acre-feet of water.

According to satellite imagery provided by the University of Texas’ Center for Space Research in Austin, Mexico currently has three times more water than the United States stored in international dams and tributary systems governed by the 1944 treaty.

According to Hill, if Mexico allocated the same volume of water to irrigation districts in Chihuahua this year as it did last there would still be one million acre-feet left over for South Texas and Tamaulipas farmers.

Statistics lodged with the IBWC show that while farmers in the Rio Conchos Basin received an average of 6.2 acre-feet of water per acre last year, South Texas farmers got just six-tenths of an acre-foot. Tamaulipas farmers in Irrigation District 25 got no irrigated water at all.

Combs said she believed it was now time for the U.S. government to look at halting delivery of water from the Colorado River to Mexico. Combs also suggested that all foreign aid funds Congress sends to Mexico for economic development be stopped.

"It is time to look at reprisals, and I believe that all options should be on the table," Combs said. "How can we justify sending all this aid to Mexico when economic development in the Rio Grande Valley has been devastated by Mexico’s failure to deliver water to Texas?"

Robert Huston, chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, was at the water talks. He said he was unable to comment on the negotiations but did promise that a summary of the state’s legal options relating to the 1944 treaty would be issued within the next few days.

Valley farmers have been anxiously waiting for a report on the state’s legal rights and remedies commissioned by the TCEQ from Washington, D.C., international law specialists Covington & Burling. Some farmers’ leaders hope the report outlines ways for the state to sue the federal government for failing to enforce the treaty.

Hill said Linskey had promised to send a report on the breakdown of the negotiations to President Bush when he returned to Washington. He said Linskey also made calls to the White House Monday to confirm the water dispute had been discussed between Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox at their meeting in Los Cabos, Baja California, last Saturday.

Calls to the State Department press office and the Mexican Embassy were not returned Tuesday.

-- Anonymous, October 30, 2002