US-Mexico Water Conference Finds Opportunities for Cross-Border Collaboration
Water in the West is a crucial issue to not only western U.S. states, but across international borders as well. The Center’s legal scholar Vanessa Casado-Pérez is involved in expanding the program’s communication and collaboration with Mexican water managers, researchers, and policymakers. Here is a recap of Water in the West’s recent cross-border conference at Stanford Law School.
The Center’s Water in the West Program hosted a three-day Uncommon Dialogue on US-Mexico trans-boundary water issues at Stanford Law School. It deserves the adjective “uncommon” because the workshop brought together professionals from different disciplines and sectors on both sides of the border. Lawyers, engineers, political scientists, Environmental Protection Agency staff, and officials from CONAGUA, the Mexican water agency, were among those who participated. The goal of the workshop was to identify areas of research that might foster integrated trans-boundary management of water resources.
The workshop took off with an evening keynote by Rick Van Schoik of the North American Research Partnership, who offered an overview of water challenges along the 1,954-mile border. The next day, two panels covered the state of groundwater aquifers and the water-energy nexus, whereby water use requires large amounts of energy, and vice-versa.
Management of groundwater aquifers is not covered by international agreements between the two countries. The lack of cooperation includes not sharing data on the status of the aquifers, which presents problems for managing a common resource. The group assessed some initiatives, like the Arizona Groundwater Management Act and the U.S. Trans-boundary Aquifers Assessment Program. During breakout sessions, smaller groups of participants considered some ideas to foster collaboration. A frequently heard suggestion was that academic institutions could be helpful at channeling bilateral cooperation.
The water-energy nexus session considered ways to promote understanding of the connection between energy and water; water-related energy use in California consumes approximately 20% of the state’s electricity, while 14.5% of the state’s energy comes from hydropower. The link between water and energy is expected to tighten with the increasing use of desalination plants, which are very energy-intensive. The discussion at this second panel focused on how to make the link visible and the management of both water and energy more integrated at local and regional scale along the border.
The workshop concluded the next day with a success story: the release of a “pulse flow” of Colorado River water from Lake Mead this spring that (at least temporarily) restored the river’s flow all the way to its historical delta on the Gulf of California. The flow was the result of Minute 319, an international agreement implementing the two nations’ 1944 Water Treaty. Leading the session were two speakers, Jennifer Pitt and Francisco Zamora, who were at the heart of the negotiation and implementation of the agreement. For the first time in years, thanks to the cooperation of governments and civil society at both sides of the border, the pulse flow helped to restore riparian habitats and bring life to a long-arid stretch of the Southwest’s largest river.
Water in the West will release a full report on the Uncommon Dialogue later this year; the meeting was a first step in fostering collaboration among researchers and policymakers from both sides of the border, with much more to come.
