I’m Terrified of What Will Happen to This Country When We Run Out of Water

4 min readThis is the kind of journalism that used to be a lot more common than it is now. Texas Monthly has produced a magisterial exercise in reporting on the subject of the dying Rio Grande river. The piece, to which I can't do justice in a simple blog post, uses the perilous state of the Rio Grande as a window into current crises and crises yet to come.Far to the west of Chihuahua’s vast deserts, the razored peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental funnel rain from annual monsoons into the Conchos, which eventually feeds into the great, meandering border river up north: the Rio Grande. Of all the goods and resources that cross the U.S.-Mexico border—cars, vegetables, drugs, guns—the water of the Rio Conchos is one of the most important and most fought over. The Conchos is by far the largest and most crucial tributary of the Rio Grande, which supports $1 billion in agriculture and is the only source of drinking water for over 1.7 million Texans downstream. But before the Conchos travels to the borderr. it’s collected behind dams like La Boquilla.That has made the Conchos an ulcer in U.S.-Mexico relations. A fracturing treaty, signed in 1944, mandates that Mexico send billions of gallons of water north into the Rio Grande. In return, the U.S. keeps dams like the Hoover open and allows the Colorado River to take its natural course into Mexico. But over the past thirty years, as water has grown increasingly scarce in the great arid center of North America, Mexico and the U.S. have clashed over the dwindling rivers that crisscross their borders. Few realize how desperate the situation has become, but this conflict will define the next decade of life in the region. By the time Velderrain stood on the hillside in Chihuahua, in 2020, a dangerous new phase had begun.In the midst of a punishing drought, Mexico had fallen far behind in its water deliveries to the U.S. Local leaders in Chihuahua were determined to keep the precious water in their own reservoirs. On the other side of the border, farmers and politicians in Texas grew livid. Governor Greg Abbott persuaded the U.S. State Department to lean hard on the Mexicans.Which brings us to an actual battle over water. Get used to them. There are going to be more.Throughout the summer of 2020, Velderrain had joined many of the protests, but the action was led by local irrigation authorities and union leaders. Now many of those leaders had disappeared. (A rumor had spread that they’d gone into hiding after receiving threats from the federal government.) Velderrain and a handful of other farmers formed a new organization they called Defensa Nacional del Agua. They soon came up with a plan to take control of La Boquilla.... As they perched atop the hill, their eyes burned from the white clouds of tear gas drifting up to them. Velderrain issued the order to charge. The soldiers below were too distracted to hear the throng of men and women sprinting toward them from behind. Even as the group’s leader, Velderrain had no idea what would happen next. “The plan wasn’t to attack the National Guard,” he told me. The idea, instead, was to overwhelm the soldiers, to stun them with the sheer number of protesters and force them to surrender, trusting that they wouldn’t open fire on civilians. But as they charged, Velderrain understood that he had no control over what his people did or how the soldiers would respond. The automatic weapons were in a shed, within easy reach of the guardsmen.By the time the soldiers turned, Velderrain was close enough to register the shock on their faces. Everything happened quickly after that. Tear gas canisters and rocks were still flying back and forth. Someone from Velderrain’s crew opened the gate at the front of the campus, and protesters poured inside, surrounding the soldiers. A military helicopter soon hovered overhead, and Velderrain could feel the wind as the blades pounded the air. Surveying the mass of people, he spotted a shock of white hair under a camo cap: the general, Vázquez Flores. Velderrain marched up to him. “It’s over,” Velderrain said. “There’s no reason to continue escalating.”But escalation may be inevitable because the water crisis surrounding the Rio Grande shows every sign of escalating.The collapse of the borderlands’ water system would transform life in the region. Millions of Texans will face the immediate pressure to relocate, fueling the kind of disaster migration Texas saw when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. On both sides of the border, the agricultural system could break down completely. There will be other more subtle but equally devastating long-term effects. South Texas is already home to some of the poorest counties in the nation, and the water scarcity will discourage investment and new business.Laurels due for Jack Herrera, the reporter who dove deep into the political and social ramifications of what the piece calls a “Day Zero,” when people turn on the taps and nothing comes out. Americans are not going to take that well.