After oil, what do you think is the most important comodity? Okay, after money, what do you think the most important comodity is? It’s water. And in fact, since water is a basic neccessity of life itself, one would be inclined to believe that water is more important than oil or money. And water is a focal point of stress around the globe. For the US, it hits home when water treaties signed decades ago are said by US sources to be ignored by the Mexican government. In fact, things have gotten so heated that even foreign press has taken note.

At the web site for Scotland’s National newspaper, TheScotsman.co.uk, an article was posted on June 17, 2002 referring to the situation as a “Cold War over Water”. See, back in 1944 the US and Mexico signed this treaty that agreed that Mexico would pay 114 billion gallons of water to Texas a year by regulating dams on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. However, Mexico is now over 500 billion gallons in debt and after a recent spigot opening on the Mexican side of the Falcon Lake Resevoir, over 11 billion gallons have been dispensed to Mexican farmers who have been dealing with a terrible drought for the better part of a decade. This angers Texan water officials and farmers because not only is Mexico failing to use that water to pay off their debt, but the water taken from Falcon Lake will ruin the fishing situation there and farmers off the Rio Grande will have a much harder time farming at a time when they too are dealing with the same drought affecting Mexican farmers.

This situation is only made worse by the fifth placement of the Rio Grande on the 10 most endangered US waterways list compiled by American Rivers, a Washington DC-based environmental group. They point out that the Rio Grande has gotten so thin that it lacks enough water to even make it to the Gulf of Mexico.

Either way, the water situation is a serious one and unless the mainstream media starts covering it, before we know it, we’ll be ill equiped to deal with a world where water is, in the short term, more important the money or oil.

Read more about the US and Mexico’s “Cold War over Water” in the Scotsman by clicking “more” below and then scrolling down.

Read more about the Rio Grande being on the ten most endangered US waterways list at the Houston Chronicle website.

Read about the Falcon Lake Resevoir situation at the Valley Morning Star website and MySanAntonio.com.
Check out page 2 if any of the links have gone bad.