Living Rivers is monitoring a new threat to the people and ecology of the Colorado River delta. In retaliation for an overdue Mexican water debt, the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) has begun researching the feasibility of stopping Colorado River water from reaching the already parched Baja California.
Under a 1944 treaty, the U.S. must deliver to Mexico an average of 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado River. This represents a scant ten percent of the river’s historical natural flow which nourished the delta region before the Colorado was dammed. Although the river basins are geographically unrelated, the same treaty requires Mexico to deliver to the U.S. an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water a year from the Rio Conchos Basin and other tributaries. Due to an extraordinary drought in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico has fallen behind on its deliveries for two consecutive five-year cycles.
The Colorado River water currently delivered to Mexico is used for irrigation in Baja California and for the densely populated city of Mexicali. What little water is left, to support the environment and the many threatened species of the delta, comes mostly from agricultural runoff, or excess "spills" from U.S. reservoirs during years with above-average runoff. This is an unlikely occurrence considering the current drought cycle.
Gordon Hill, general manager of Bayview Irrigation District in south Texas, said recently, "When I suggested blocking the Colorado more than three years ago nobody—the Clinton administration, the State Department, the IBWC—would look at it. Now, finally, we have come full circle."
The threat has received support from both Texas Agriculture, Secretary Susan Combs, and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Chairman Robert Huston. Secretary Combs has called on the Bush administration not only to withhold Colorado River water from Mexico but also to cut economic aid.
