Texas Rep. Urges Trump Admin To Pressure Mexico into Making Water Payments: 'At Risk Of Losing Our Citrus Industry'

A Republican lawmaker from Texas has asked the Trump administration to put further pressure on Mexico to make water payments owed to the U.S., warning that a key industry could disappear otherwise.

Concretely, Rep. Monica De La Cruz sent a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claiming that the "most critical issue for our region continues to be the lack of water deliveries from the 1944 Water Treaty."

"We have seen a feeble attempt to deliver water by the Mexican government this year," the lawmaker added, according to Border Report. She told the outlet that the citrus industry is being threatened by the lack of water payments from Mexico.

"This gravely affects South Texans, and ultimately the entire country. If our farmers do not
get consistent water deliveries over the next 6 months, we are at risk of losing our citrus industry, after recently having lost our only sugar mill in Texas," De La Cruz wrote in a passage of the letter.

She went o to say that if the Mexican government declares a drought to not honor its payments "our farmers will not get any more water for five years, which will devastate South Texas producers and could create a national crisis."

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, has also called for harsher measures against Mexico. "You've got to have a carrot and stick and you've got to use the stick, right, whenever they don't pay," he said.

"The only way that I think we can actually get this resolved is by putting economic pressure on them. But we have a massive treaty, which makes it so complicated because it's not just South Texas that's involved in that treaty. It's the whole country."

The treaty, signed in 1944, requires Mexico to deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water from six tributaries to the U.S. every five years. In exchange, the U.S. has to give Mexico 1,500,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River every year.

However, Mexico ended the latest five-year period with a debt of 925,000 acre-feet of water, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"TCEQ continues to work closely with our federal partners, including the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to have reliability and consistency under the treaty," the agency said in a statement.

Mexico made payments earlier this year. In April, the Claudia Sheinbaum administration sent a total of 56,750 acre feet of water through a "transfer of ownership in Amistad Dam."

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.

The Mexican government reacted with a statement of its own, saying that it "reaffirms its commitment to find solutions to facilitate the management and distribution of this vital resource; and move forward in a coordinated manner with the United States for the well-being of residents on both sides of the border."