The international dams in Tamaulipas and Coahuila are registering critical levels that prevent them from paying the quota of 1,000 million cubic meters of water that they owe to the United States, warned the Secretary of Hydraulic Resources, Raúl Quiroga Álvarez.
The intense rains of the tropical storm “Alberto” did not benefit the Falcón dams, in Tamaulipas, and La Amistad, in Coahuila, which currently register a storage of 10% and 12%, respectively, according to reports from the National Water Commission (Conagua).
“That is the responsibility of the Federation, of course, yes. We are sitting at the table with the Federation and with the states of the upper part of the basin, in the Council of the Rio Bravo Basin, and there we analyze and rule. The problem is that the Federation does not take action on the matter.”
The low storage in the reservoirs not only affects the bilateral relationship with the United States, but also locally, since 1.5 billion cubic meters are needed to meet the water supply for the northern region of Tamaulipas.
“We are in an extraordinary crisis,” said the secretary, adding that one billion cubic meters are owed to the US, with no possibility of making payments because “San Alberto” did not increase storage in both dams, as was the case in the rest of the Tamaulipas dams, which register levels above 50%, “And that is why we are still in crisis in the Rio Bravo basin.”
And the issue is complicated, because on October 24, 2025, cycle 36 of the 1944 treaty signed by the United States and Mexico expires. The document establishes that Mexico must deliver almost 432 hm3 of water annually to the United States from the Rio Bravo through the La Amistad and La Falcón dams. In contrast, the United States must deliver 1,850 hm3 of water annually to Mexico from the Colorado River at the Imperial Dam in California.
Source: elmanana
However, he clarified that there is no risk of a sanction, because the Government of Mexico has warned that there is not enough water to pay them because there is an “extraordinary drought.”
- However, the state secretary said that this is due to the fact that there is an over-demand in the Rio Bravo basin that has not allowed the level of the dams to increase and, therefore, the payment for water is not met.
- He recalled that in 2001 the then President of the Republic, Vicente Fox, and the states that are supplied by the Rio Bravo basin, such as Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Durango and Chihuahua, that a purification and ordering of the same would be achieved, but Conagua never carried out those actions.
- “That is the responsibility of the Federation, of course, yes. We are sitting at the table with the Federation and the states in the upper part of the basin, in the Rio Bravo Basin Council, and there we analyze and issue rulings. The problem is that the Federation does not take action on the matter,” he said.
- Finally, he stressed that the basin has “many more actors” than it can bear, with excessive extractions of what was agreed in the concessions and the theft of the resource, without anything being done about it.
