BOARD02099

• Board Meeting Date: 5/20/2002
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

"Last year, Mexico started efforts to initiate diplomatic consultations, and
the effort will be pressed more intensively ln the short term," Szekely said.

The leaks from the canal easily filter down through the sandy earth east of
Calexico and into the aquifer. For 58 years, the high-quality water-meaning low
in salts--from the All-American Canal has bathed Gonzalez's farm and those of
his neighbors. The water has made this part of the Mexicali Valley Mexico's
most productive farmland after the Rio Grande Valley south of Texas.

Yields of wheat, alfalfa and cotton on Gonzalez's farm, 300 yards from the U.S.
border, are up to 50% higher than the rest of the Mexicali Valley, which
doesn't benefit from the canal seepage. That productivity, coupled with low-
cost Mexican farm labor, has also attracted scores of U.S. farmers who rent
large parcels here and grow an assortment of crops.

Gonzalez and other farmers receive the canal water from private wells and from
the 425 wells that the Mexican government has sunk into the area to catch the
seepage. That well water is then distributed by irrigation canals over about
50,000 acres of farmland.

The Imperial district, the largest irrigation district in the United States,
has talked for years about lining the more porous parts of the canal with
concrete. But plans never advanced, partly because of plentiful supplies of
Colorado River water--and because of Mexico's adamant claim that the
subterranean water is rightfully theirs.

The district has never conceded the Mexican claim, and, in fact, language in
the 1944 water agreement is vague about who owns subterranean water, merely
requlrlng both sides to consult any time one side's actions might affect the
other.

Juan Pablo Hernandez, Baja's agricultural development secretary, said no such
consultation or negotiation has occurred.

"I can't say whether the United States has acted unilaterally in other border
water disputes, but that is what is happening here," said Hernandez,who is also
a Mexicali Valley farmer.

Alfonso Cortes, a researcher in water policy at the College of the Northern
Border in Mexicali, says the "unilateral decision" to line the canal is one of
the most serious ground-water issues facing the United States and Mexico and
would alter farming throughout the Mexicali Valley.

"This project will cause many conflicts and social damage," he said. "More than
30,000 people live in this area, and what will happen to their livelihoods?
What will happen to their drinking water?"

California officials say that the lining project violates neither the letter
nor spirit of the binational water agreement and that asking Southern
California not to line the canal so that the water can continue to seep out and
aid the Mexicali Valley is asking too much.

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