International Boundary And Water Commission Research Articles

Featured Collection Introduction: Severe Sustained Drought Revisited: Managing the Colorado River System in Times of Water Shortage 25 Years Later — Part I

Featured Collection Introduction: Severe Sustained Drought Revisited: Managing the Colorado River System in Times of Water Shortage 25 Years Later — Part I

Rio Grande an International Boundary River Is Drying up and in Need of Restoration

The headwater source of the Rio Grande is in the Colorado San Juan Mountains as it flows southeast and south. The river crosses deserts and steppes, watering rich irrigated agricultural regions as it drains into the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. The river flow pattern is disrupted by hundreds of dams and irrigation diversions, which has left sections of the Rio Grande River dry. The lower Rio Grande Valley including the Rio Grande Delta is heavily irrigated and has become an important agricultural region. Since the mid-1990s, the flow has been reduced to 20% because of many large diversions, dams and consumption of water by cities and irrigated farmland. Even with a series of 2001 and 2002, Mexico-United States agreements administered by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) the Rio Grande River had continued to failed to reach the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico and United States share the river. Historically, the Rio Grande has provided limited navigation and border security. There is a need to restore navigation and shipping by creating a lock and dam system from El Paso, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, In addition there is also a need to restore border security for the Lower Rio Grande, an international border river. If the Rio Grande is ever going to recover, it will require a lock and dam system and an increased river flow. The increased flow needs to be achieved by adding additional water from feeder lakes, a water pipeline, and a balanced approach to water management must include efficiency measures and aggressive conservation in urban areas and on irrigated agricultural lands.

Mecanismo participativo de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas: retos de gobernanza para la seguridad hídrica

En este trabajo se analizan las características, principios y funcionamiento del instrumento de participación ciudadana implementado por la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA) en la frontera México-Estados Unidos y se contrasta con otros esquemas similares relacionados con la gestión de aguas transfronterizas. A partir de las perspectivas de participación social, gobernanza del agua y seguridad hídrica se revisa el caso de los Foros Ciudadanos de la CILA, específicamente el que se estableció para la región Mexicali y San Luis Río Colorado, a efecto de abordar los temas concernientes al río Colorado. Se observa la existencia de mecanismos participativos establecidos incluso antes de la firma de los acuerdos paralelos del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte y cómo éstos tienen el potencial para trasladar las enseñanzas para el involucramiento de comunidades locales en los proyectos sobre agua. El estudio demuestra la existencia de una participación ciudadana activa, apoyada por una normatividad coherente con una estrategia de gobernanza, que sin embargo encuentra su obstáculo mayor entre aquellos entes que debieran estar promoviéndola y garantizándola. Finalmente se sugiere trasladar las experiencias positivas a efecto de mejorar la gestión participativa del agua en la región.

Resistance and Reform: Transboundary Water Governance in the Colorado River Delta

AbstractBilateral governance of transboundary water resources between the United States and Mexico is in flux today. Historically, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), the joint commission by which the two countries jointly manage shared rivers, has dominated decision making and policy in the border region by defining problems and framing knowledge. However, over the past two decades, a transnational network has been emerging to restore the Colorado River Delta. In this paper, we explore how a transnational network has been operating collaboratively to shift transboundary water governance in the Colorado River Delta region toward greater participatory, science‐based governance. We explore the IBWC in this context of governance change to reveal the adoption of institutional and policy reforms, along with some resistance to this change.

Goodenough Spring, Texas, USA: Discharge and water chemistry of a large spring deeply submerged under the binational Amistad Reservoir

Goodenough Spring (Texas, USA) is a large spring near the border of the American state of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahuila, discharging into the international Amistad Reservoir on the river Rio Grande (Rio Bravo). Discharge was routinely measured from 1928 until 1968 to partition the flow of the river between the two countries in accordance with water-use treaties. Samples were analyzed for water-quality parameters in 1967–1968 prior to inundation under 45 m of Amistad Reservoir in 1968. Subsequently, discharge has been estimated indirectly by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). For the first direct measurements of the spring in 37 years, velocity and cross-sectional measurements were made and water samples collected in the summer of 2005 using advanced self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) techniques. Spring discharge was calculated at 2.03 m3 s–1, approximately one-half of the historical mean of 3.94 m3 s–1. In situ and laboratory analyses of samples for temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, specific conductance, alkalinity, nitrate-nitrogen, dissolved solids, chloride, sulfate, fluoride, phosphorus, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and iron showed the water quality to be very good for human consumption and crop irrigation. Measurement values are relatively unchanged from those reported 37 years prior.

The Fighting Padre of Zapata: Father Edward Bastien and the Falcon Dam Project (review)

2oo8 Book Reviews223 which "equal protection" was used to exclude Mexican-American jurors (Pp. 96-97). However, these limitations do not significantly detract from the compelling manner in which Beatriz de la Garza subtly reconstructs a past injustice while at the same time relating it to die broader historical context. A Lawfor the Lion is an instructive and engaging tale of South Texas history. Texas AafM UniversityCarlos Kevin Blanton The Fighting Padre of Zapata: Father Edward Bastien and the Falcon Dam Project. Edited by Maria F. Rollin. Southwestern Studies, no. 10. (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2003. Pp. xxxii+265. Foreword, preface, acknowledgments, note on editorial method, maps, illustrations, epilogue, appendices, notes, bibliography . ISBN 0-87404-285-2. $18.00, paper.) Maria F. Rollin's The Fighting Padre ofZapata makes an important contribution to the historiography of South Texas; it adds to the growing documentary collection of the area's history, and it is an easy read. Rollin salvaged an old manuscript prepared by Father Edward Bastien, who led the fight to assure that American residents displaced by the Falcon Dam project were justly compensated. The dislocated Mexican residents, on the other hand, were well taken care of by their own government. Father Bastien, a French Canadian, came to Zapata in 1946 at about the same time that the United States and Mexico began to develop the Falcon Dam, which was designed to help residents of the Lower Rio Grande Valley get water when they needed it. The dam would hold water from damaging floods and release it during times of drought. Everyone, including Bastien and his parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, supported the project and its aims. What they disagreed with, and fought against for over a decade, were the methods used by the United States government to pay for homes, businesses, and land inundated by the new lake formed by the dam. Father Bastien clashed with government bureaucrats from the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) over full replacement value of the properties, the right to buy back homes at "salvage value," and the requirement to clear the titles to lands that were being condemned. Father Bastien put together a formidable team to fight the IBWC, which he derisively said stood for "I beat widows and children." Locally, the Padre got help from the Zapata Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion. He even formed an uneasy alliance with George Parr's Partido Viejo, which dominated Zapata's county government. Nationally he enlisted the help of Democrats and Republicans alike, including U.S. Senators Lyndon B. Johnson and Price Daniel, Congressmen Lloyd Bentsen and Joe Kilgore, Governor Allan Shivers, and Republican National Committee memberJack Porter. Other important members of the Bastien team were newspapers such as the Laredo Times, Corpus Christi Caller, San Antonio Express, and Houston Chronicle. Bastien wrote hundreds of letters advancing the cause and as a result of his 224Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober efforts, hundreds of columns of newspaper print were dedicated to the issue. He compiled many of these letters and articles into a manuscript he hoped would someday be published. He called his work "The Case of Zapata: The Case of the Missing Policy Maker" and signed it with his pseudonym, I. ???, alias the Sad Zap. I ??? stood for "irate people of Zapata" and Sad Zap for "Self-Appointed Defender of Zapata." Rollin does a goodjob of editing Father Bastien's work and adds to it by publishing many important letters not in the original manuscript; these she retrieved from the Lyndon B.Johnson Library and the Sam Houston Regional Library. All in all, this book would be a good addition to collections of South Texas history. Pflugerville, TexasAlfredo E. Cardenas Golden Boy: The Harold Simmons Story. By John J. Nance. (Austin: Eakin Press, 2003. Pp.vi+322. Photographs. ISBN 1-57168-747-5. $24.95, cloth.) Deciphering the system in which one operates can make risk seem less daunting and its rewards more satisfying. Golden Boy: The Harold Simmons Story is a review of a life's work spent in educated risk taking. John Nance weaves one individual 's story ofwealth creation into a readable overview of the world of...

The peaceful resolution of U.S.-Mexican transboundary water disputes

To deal with boundary and transboundary water issues along their border, the United States and Mexico established the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) in 1889. Initially dealing only with surface water flows, its flexibility permitted changes such that groundwater and water quality issues could be addressed. In 1994, the U.S., Mexico, and Canada adopted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) primarily to facilitate trade, but which can govern water as an article of commerce. Both NAFTA and the IBWC have been instrumental in promoting peaceful solutions to water issues. The article examines three cases: (1) Mexico's protesting of a U.S. plan to line the All-American Canal on the Mexico-California; (2) the underdelivery of Mexican Rio Grande water to the U.S. state of Texas; and (3) the case of an aquifer entirely within Mexico whose supply is being stressed because of a shift in agricultural production prompted by NAFTA. The article concludes that both countries should: (1) develop a more formal system for groundwater issues and (2) exercise vigilance with respect to NAFTA's ability to treat water solely as an economic good.

Innovation Prospects in US — Mexico Border Water Management: The IBWC and the BECC in Theoretical Perspective

Binational water management along the US—Mexican border is changing as a result of new institutions and approaches growing out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In this study we examine the two leading border water-management agencies today, the venerable International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and the new Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), to understand better the post-NAFTA prospects for policy innovation in this issue area. The two agencies, IBWC and BECC, are analyzed from the perspective of two prominent theoretical explanations for agency behavior, structural choice politics and interorganizational implementation, to identify their political and institutional limitations as binational water-management agencies. We then chart the prospects for further innovation in binational water management along the US—Mexico border.

Environmental Management on the Mexico-United States Border: NAFTA and the Emerging Bilateral Regime

Introduction Public concern with environmental management in areas is of fairly recent vintage. What might be called modern environmental activism along the Mexico-U.S. traces its roots only to the mid-1970s with social mobilization on sanitation issues. For example, as late as 1979 in a seminal report on transboundary environmental problems, Howard Applegate--professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas, El Paso, and a pioneer scholar-activist in mobilizing public attention to transboundary environmental problems--failed to single out hazardous materials and toxic waste (HAZMAT) as a distinct health-related issue (Applegate 1979). Obviously, much has changed since then. In the area, rapid urban development is increasingly manifest in a range of environmental threats to public health arising from deteriorating air quality, water pollution, hazardous and toxic waste disposal, and amplified industrial and commercial activities. The intensification of these conditions accounts for the rapidly changing public policy environment we are witnessing today. A useful baseline for examining environmental management trends on the is the United States-Mexico Environmental Cooperation Agreement, signed in La Paz, Mexico, in 1983 (La Paz Agreement). That agreement established an institutional framework that has provided both a forum for the articulation of bilateral public concern and a framework for the negotiation of subsidiary bilateral agreements (Agreement 1983). Since the La Paz Agreement took effect, various of these subsidiary agreements (Annexes) have targeted bilateral management of hazardous substances in the zone. Dissatisfaction with the overall pace of change has likewise fueled public criticism of existing institutions--the Border Cesspool syndrome--galvanizing new national, binational, and multinational efforts to strengthen policy safeguards in this issue-area. Recently, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has added to the arsenal of regulatory tools for environmental management available at the binational and trinational levels. This article traces the modern development of environmental management on the Mexico-U.S. border. It reviews what might be called the and transitional regimes for managing environmental problems, then turns to profile the emerging NAFTA concluding with a brief comment on this new regime's challenges for environmental management in the region. Bilateral Environmental Management on the Border: Old and Transitional Regimes Environmental management in the zone has proceeded in several distinct stages. The first of these stages, what I call the regime, may be chronologically bracketed from about 1930 through 1979. Three features distinguish this regime: first, the lack of discrete bilateral policy instruments aimed at air quality and hazardous waste management; second, a preoccupation with public sanitation issues; and third, reliance on local ordinances and agencies for implementation of health safeguards. The Old Regime. The absence of defined bilateral instruments for dealing with air quality and HAZMATs is a key feature of this regime. Growing urbanization of the community, well underway in the 1930s, led directly to public concern with sewage and sanitation before World War Two. Where binational cooperation was required to address sanitation problems, the old International Boundary Commission (IBC) was entrusted with project development and oversight. In 1944, the Water Treaty with Mexico (hereinafter 1944 Water Treaty) reconfigured the IBC as the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and entrusted it to solve all sanitation problems (Treaty 1944). The IBWC thus became the first binational agency on the Mexico-U.S. charged with resolving water quality problems, defined as border sanitation problems. …

The new regime for managing US—Mexican water resources

United States-Mexican transboundary water resources management is presently experiencing significant reform resulting from long-term demographic processes in the border region and greater economic integration. The recently concluded North American Free Trade Agreement and supplementary environmental accord modify existing agreements and provide old institution with new mandates. Particularly affected is the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), long the lead agency in binational water management. This essay reviews the development of the new water management regime against the two preceding phases of management reform and considers its implications for improved water management in the border region.

Similarities and Differences in Perceptions of Public Service among Public Administrators on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Internationalizing Public Management As the end of the 20th century nears, all public managers must prepare to participate in a global environment (Riggs, 1991). At the same time, U.S. public administrators are finding that their public now consists of people from many other cultures (Singer, 1992). Thus it is becoming increasingly necessary for U.S. public managers to explore how their counterparts in other cultures think--about themselves, about us, and about working in the public sector (Anderson, 1992). New research is needed that takes into account the broader environment and places the study of public administration in a world context (Jun, 1976). Nowhere is this more true or more urgent than on the U.S.-Mexico border. The Clinton administration recently promised to help provide over $7 billion for infrastructure projects along the border as part of the negotiations with Mexico on how to implement the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This marks the first time that funds will be earmarked for dealing bi-nationally with border-area problems. Texas officials alone have identified needs for over $2 billion for projects including wastewater treatment, solid waste disposal, and hazardous waste management (LaGesse, 1993). Until now, most U.S.--as well as Mexican--public sector projects have stopped at the border. Indeed, with the exception of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and a handful of bridges over the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, there have been very few joint U.S.-Mexican public projects (Mumme, 1984). However, calls are being issued with increasing frequency and urgency for joint local public sector projects to be undertaken in areas such as preventive health, drug interdiction, crime control, air pollution, environmental cleanup, and so forth. If such projects are to be undertaken, it will be important for local public managers in the United States and Mexico to become more familiar with one another's perceptions of public service. One compelling reason is that as demands for public services increase, the size and power of government increases, which in turn increases the public's demand for accountability (Dwivedi and Jabbra, 1989). Different states adopt different accountability mechanisms, but an important one is the orientation that the public administrator adopts to public service. However, this orientation can vary, especially between less-developed and more-developed countries (Heidenheimer, 1970). In less-developed societies, where exchange relations may be based on kinship or patron-client relations, the public official may have little sense of duty to the broader community. In transitional societies, the public official may have links to the larger society, but through political `machines' that mediate between the citizen and the government. In more-developed societies, a civic culture evolves in which the public official develops strong community-regarding norms (p. 22). There are problems with using normative orientations as accountability mechanisms (Smookler, 1989), but they are relied on to a great extent in most bureaucratic nations; thus it is important to discover what these orientations are. This is especially true for relationships between the United States and Mexico. Mexico has been characterized as a patrimonial state (Grindle, 1977), where the state performs a wider variety of functions than is typical in the United States, and the bureaucracy is one of the most important institutions in society. Although Mexican government is in theory a federated model, in practice it is highly centralized and personalized in the executive branch and at the federal level. The electoral (Congress, state legislatures) and judicial branches of government are relatively weak and dominated by the executive branch (Tuohy, 1973). State and municipal governments have little autonomous power and even fewer independent resources (Fagen and Tuohy, 1972). …