BROWNSVILLE, Texas, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Texas farm leaders called Wednesday for the U.S. government to impose economic sanctions against Mexico for its failure to release water into the Rio Grande as required by a 1944 treaty.
Farmers in the South Texas agricultural region are angered because the Mexican government failed this week to present a water release plan to settle the long-running dispute that has cost the valley $1 billion and 10,000 jobs over the past five years.
Gordon Hill, general manager of the Bayview Irrigation District, said all parties were invited to the meeting at El Paso with the understanding that a settlement was at hand.
"Basically Mexico lied to the State Department, lied to everybody," he said. "They did not present any plan at all, no numbers, nothing. They refused to discuss the issue. They had no excuses. They said they would try to get back to us."
Hill said the Mexican government has said that for the past two years but nothing has been done to solve the lingering water shortage in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the nation's largest producers of citrus and fresh vegetables.
The situation has grown so severe that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, recently obtained $10 million in federal aid for farmers who were severely impacted by the water shortage. Farmers will begin applying for those funds Friday.
Angered by the latest setback, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said it's time to look at reprisals and all options should be on the table.
One option would be that the United States would withhold delivery of water from the Colorado River to Mexico. Under the same 1944 treaty, the United States is obligated to deliver 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico annually and has never failed to deliver.
Combs also suggested that all foreign aid funds Congress sends to Mexico for economic development should be halted.
"How can we justify sending this aid to Mexico when economic development in the Rio Grande Valley has been devastated by Mexico's failure to deliver water to Texas," she said.
Hill said farmers in the valley and other Texas officials have been pushing for sanctions against Mexico for the past two years.
"There is no way that you could say they are good neighbors treating us like this," he said.
The Mexican government has declined to make any comment so far on this week's developments.
The 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 Mexican state of Chihuahua. Mexico defaulted on Oct. 2 and owes around 1.5 million acre-feet of water.
Satellite photos taken recently by the University of Texas' Center for Space Research disclosed that Mexico has three times more water than the United States stored in international dams and tributary systems governed by the 1944 treaty.
