ICYMI: Senator Cruz’s Resolution on Texas Water Rights

WASHINGTON, DC – In case you missed it: New legislation by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), would increase support for U.S. diplomats and officials seeking to strengthen Mexican compliance with the Treaty of 1944 on the use of the waters of the Colorado, Tijuana, and Rio Grande rivers, and to ensure that future water deliveries by Mexico are predictable and reliable.

Morning Farming from Politico Pro story below:

FIRST IN MO: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) plans to introduce a bill this week that would increase enforcement tools for U.S. diplomats and officials to enforce a 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty.

The legislation, which Sen. Johannes Cornyn (R-Texas) is co-sponsoring, the latest plan to push Mexico to deliver water payments to the U.S. as required under the 80-year-old treaty.

Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley are facing another year of billions of dollars in losses as Mexico has fallen behind on water payments due every five years, according to the State Department.

The new legislation specifically directs the Secretary of State to use all resources necessary to support the International Boundary and Water Commission, which administers the treaty, to make the supply of water from Mexico more reliable.

A bipartisan Senate majority voted in favor of a water rights amendment Cruz was introduced in November that would force compliance from Mexico. However, it did not gain enough support to overcome a filibuster.

“Mexico has consistently failed to live up to its end of the bargain when it comes to America’s water supply,” Cruz said in a statement. “Mexican officials now have so many arrears that they will not be able to comply with the treaty and will fall short in the current cycle.”

Cornyn emphasized the need for federal action on treaty enforcement, especially given the looming severe summer drought in Texas.

In the field: Brian Jones, who represents the southernmost counties along the Texas-Mexico border on the Texas Farm Bureau board of directors, said farms and businesses will “certainly” close if water availability doesn’t change soon.

Jones, who worked as a producer in Texas for 38 years, typically hires three employees. This year he has reduced to one full-time and one part-time and has planted half his normal amount of grain sorghum “completely due to the lack of water.”

“A lot of people here are doing the same thing,” Jones told MA.

Response from the administration: The State Department told congressional staff in a briefing last week that the department is discussing solutions internally and continuing to work with the Mexican government, a spokesperson for Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) confirmed to MA.

The department is urging Mexico’s Foreign Ministry to sign a new water deal, the Rio Grande Minute, that would prevent “recurring crises” at the end of the five-year cycle outlined in the 1944 treaty through earlier delivery of water to stimulate. said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

###