President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that “there is already an agreement” and that she will fulfill “little by little” with the Treaty of International Waters of the United States due to drought problems, after US officials accused Mexico of owing the provision of the liquid that must be delivered within the border pact.
“There is agreement, at this time there is negotiation with the United States because there have been many years of drought, then now the (Río) Bravo (or large) has less water, but we will fulfill the agreement little by little, and that is why there is this dialogue,” said the president at her morning conference.
The pressure grew after a pronouncement of Texas legislators in March in which they urged the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to include in the tariff negotiations with Mexico pressures to comply with the border distribution of the agreed water in the 1944 Treaty.
In the document they indicated losses that amount to about 993 million dollars annually in southern Texas due to the lack of water for irrigation, according to calculations from the Texas A&M University.
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Sheinbaum states that he will fulfill ‘gradually’ with the Water Treaty with the US for drought
But the drought and the “critical situation” of the Coldo River and the Bravo River, origin of the water for the agreements, have complicated compliance with the pact, as explained to Efe Rosario Sánchez, director of the Permanent Forum of Binational Waters.
Sheinbaum insisted that “there is a dialogue with the United States, through Cila,” the International Limit and Water Commission.
He also recalled that he presented at the beginning of his government the National Water Plan, which includes technifying 200,000 hectares of agricultural irrigation and an initial investment of 20,000 million pesos in 2025.
“We are doing, particularly on the northern border, although not only because it is throughout the country, the entire agricultural irrigation technification program, that will be very important because the field with less water will make more productive, it is something that the United States had been requesting Mexico,” he said.
With EFE information.
