Posted on 11/21/2002 5:07:41 AM PST by madfly
Colin Powell, Tony Garza head to Mexico
Diplomacy: State Department team lead delegation that will discuss water delinquency
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By STEVE TAYLOR
The Brownsville Herald
AUSTIN — South Texas lawmakers and farmers have called on Tony Garza, the new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, to threaten sanctions when he discusses the water treaty dispute in Mexico City next week.
Garza, a former Cameron County judge, joins Secretary of State Colin Powell in a U.S. delegation for talks with Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge Castañeda and other Mexican Cabinet members at a Binational Commission meeting Nov. 25-26.
State Department spokesman Robert Zimmerman confirmed Tuesday that the long-running U.S.-Mexico water treaty dispute would play a "prominent part in the discussions," along with immigration and border security.
Being placed high on the agenda is not enough for Rio Grande Valley irrigation district managers, however. They say the future of agriculture in South Texas is now at stake and that the time for talking is over.
"Tony Garza and the rest of the United States delegation had better be talking sanctions," said Gordon Hill, general manager for Bayview Irrigation District.
"We know that the state of Chihuahua now has more than enough water to pay off its debt to Texas and increase its own agricultural activity. By not releasing the water they are conducting economic warfare on the United States to drive us out of business."
Hill said he was sending spreadsheets to the State Department that show Chihuahua has nearly 3 million acre-feet of water in storage, compared to the 1 million acre-feet the United States has stored in the Amistad and Falcon international reservoirs.
Garza could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Jennifer Waisath, a spokeswoman for Garza at the Texas Railroad Commission, said Garza would be traveling to Mexico City on Thursday to hand over his ambassadorial credentials to Mexican President Vicente Fox on Friday.
Garza formally resigned from the Railroad Commission on Monday and was sworn in as ambassador in the White House’s Oval Office the same day in a ceremony attended by President Bush.
Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to deliver an average of 350,000 acre-feet of water per year to the United States, mostly from the Rio Conchos Basin in Chihuahua. In return, the United States must deliver 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year to Mexico from the Colorado River.
While the United States has complied with the treaty, Mexico, claiming extraordinary drought, has fallen behind in its repayments since 1992 and now owes more than 1.5 million acre-feet of water.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said she wrote Bush last week to press the case for sanctions against Mexico. She said these could include cutbacks in foreign aid and withholding Colorado River water from Baja California and Sonora, a possibility currently being explored by the Bureau of Reclamation and the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Combs said her own investigations had shown that Lake Meade, a reservoir in Arizona, had capacity to store 900,000 acre-feet of Mexico-bound Colorado River water. She said she hoped the threat of sanctions would be relayed to Mexico next week.
"The time for sanctions is long overdue," Combs said. "I have called the White House. We have called the State Department. Everyone is calling and raising the heat. The message has been received, the question is what happens next week."
U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, released a letter Tuesday he had sent to Secretary of State Powell ahead of the Mexico City meetings. Hinojosa agreed the time for talking was over and said it was now necessary for both sanctions against Mexico and the immediate allocation of North American Development Bank funds to help South Texas irrigation infrastructure projects.
"It is imperative that our government immediately take every available recourse to force Mexico to pay its water debt to the United States," Hinojosa wrote. "If the water debt is not paid in full within a short period of time, this agricultural season could be our last."
Ray Prewett, executive vice president of Texas Citrus Mutual and a founding member of Texans for Treaty Compliance, said Valley farmers’ leaders were currently working on "position papers" that would be sent to Cabinet departments represented at next week’s meetings.
"There is no question that next week’s meetings are crucial," Prewett said. "We do detect a stiffening of the backbone of our administration but we are not yet sure our administration is where it needs be on this issue."
State Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, said he was "truly excited" about the Binational Commission meeting. Lucio said he would be sending a copy of the testimony offered at last week’s state Senate Border Affairs Subcommittee hearing to Powell and Garza.
"The meeting was dedicated entirely to Mexico’s noncompliance with the water repayment and the pain it is causing the citizens of South Texas. The information should show that statewide leaders will pursue every avenue available to ensure Mexico’s compliance," said Lucio, the committee’s chairman.
"For the first time in a long time, we feel confident that we will have a strong voice at the table. Ambassador Garza knows first-hand the devastation Mexico’s refusal to honor the 1944 water treaty has caused. He will be a strong advocate for requesting that Mexico meet the treaty’s obligations."
Miguel Monterrubio, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the water dispute remained "an important part of the binational agenda," but did not know how significantly it would be treated at next week’s meetings.
In exchange for what..."regularization" for their lawbreakers??
Mexico is playing these games to use them as bargaining chips for their real agenda: amnesty for all the illegal aliens in this country. Hmmm I wonder what Eisenhower, a real general would have done in this situation?
Not only that but after a phone call or two we'd have our water.
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