FORT WORTH, TEXAS (dpa) – At the end of another baking summer, the Rio Grande hardly lives up to its name.
For long stretches, the “great river” has been reduced to a foul- smelling rivulet, its water syphoned off by the farms and cities along its banks, the aquatic life killed by industrial effluent.
After years of drought, water is now being rationed along the lower course of the 3,000-kilometre-long waterway that defines much of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Tensions are growing on both sides of the Rio Grande, and the issue was on the agenda when President George W. Bush met his Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox in Washington this month.
It is at the mouth of the river, near the twin cities of Brownsville, Texas, and the Mexican town of Matamaros, that the river’s problems are most apparent:
Rather than reach the Gulf of Mexico, the last drops of water disappear in the mud of a riverbed that is overgrown with weeds and shrubs.
In recent years a lack of rain has kept the water supply down in this arid and mountainous border region while agricultural, industrial and residential demand for water has grown.
As the precious resource is becoming scarcer, a row has broken out between Mexicans and Texans. Texas accuses the southern neighbours of hoarding the water in vast reservoirs.
U.S. members of the International Boundary and Water Commission found that Mexico was holding more than 1.2 billion cubic meters of the life-giving fluid back.
In March, Bush and Fox signed an agreement committing Mexico to releasing 3.6 million cubic metres of water by late September, under an agreement on the river’s use first signed in 1944.
But Texan farmers in the Rio Grande valley were outraged when Mexican authorities recently announced they will be unable to meet their commitments this year.
Texan Governor Rick Perry has appealed to Mexico to meet its obligations and free up the water reserves, so far to no avail.
U.S. critics say Mexico is withholding the water to give it bargaining power in another controversial bilateral issue under discussion – allowing its trucks full access to U.S. highways.
While the standoff continues, Texan press reports paint a grim picture on both banks of the Rio Grande.
Many U.S. farmers say they have water reserves for only a few more weeks, and Brownsville has warned it will run dry in four days.
Across the river, in Matamaros, the public water supply has been shut off overnight, and a state of emergency has been declared in the north of Tamaulipas province.
Worsening the problem is the fact that any water that may now be released from Mexico’s Falcon Dam would take nearly a week to make it down the overgrown riverbed to the Gulf.
