Mexico made the first payment of water owed to the United States under a 80-year-old treaty, but the amount is still far from the total owed to its northern neighbor.
According to Border Report, the Claudia Sheinbaum administration sent a total of 56,750 acre feet of water through a “transfer of ownership in Amistad Dam” on April 30, meaning that the country gave part of the water that was listed as its own in the reservoir.
A spokesman for the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission confirmed the payment was made. However, the figure is still far from the 1.14 million acre-feet owed by Mexico.
The country has until October to pay the debt. So far it has paid a little over 600,000 acre-feet in about four and a half years, so it would have to rapidly increase deliveries if it has any hopes of meeting the deadline.
The decision to increase water deliveries from the Sheinbaum administration took place less than a day after Trump threatened to impose sanctions, saying there will be “an immediate delivery of a number of millions of cubic meters” of water to the region.”
Mexico’s water commission CONAGUA has constantly argued that the country is not unwilling to comply, just unable to do so. “We want to comply with the treaty – from which both countries benefit greatly. But we are in a drought situation made worse in recent years due to factors such as climate change,” a Mexican official told Border Report in late April.
That’s why The New York Times warned that while the concession defused bilateral tensions, it could “revive civil unrest triggered by previous water payments to the United States.” It recalled that in 2020 farmers seized control of a dam in the border region and attempted to cease water deliveries to the U.S.
Originally published on Latin Times
