PRESIDIO, Texas– Most of the water that courses through the Rio Grande to reach parched farmlands along the border gets its start here, where the Rio Grande is replenished through Mexico's Rio Conchos.
This pocket of the border is known as La Junta de los Rios, where the two rivers meet and irrigate what's believed .
"This land has been farmed for thousands of years, before even when Christ was born," said Chris Bell, who's new to farming in Presidio. "This whole valley's just been rich forever. It keeps everyone alive."
This region's rich soil and access to the river lured Bell here. He's hoping to grow alfalfa and turfgrass, and bring back what was .
But Bell's hope isn't without its challenges: on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to uphold that requires it to send billions of gallons of water to the U.S. every five years.
"It's just been hard on everybody to get enough water," said Bell. "It's not raining that much, and there's just, a lot of things have changed."
Mexico has historically been behind on delivering that water – and as a result, , Texas farms have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade.
Recently, to force water deliveries, with the threat of tariffs and – .
Rosario Sanchez, a senior research scientist at Texas Water Resources Institute at Texas A&M University, said the state is looking for "predictability and reliability, which is what Mexico has not been able to do over the last 15 years or so."
And she said that unpredictability is unlikely to change, because the water just isn't there.
"We're basically broke," said Sanchez, adding that no threat or amount of political pressure will change the reality of the water scarcity. "You can impose anything you want, but that's not going to create water."
"It's everybody's problem," said Sanchez. "It's not Texas' problem, it's not Mexico's problem, it's everybody's problem."
With just six months left until the five-year deadline set by the treaty, .
In April, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico , and will do so not because of political pressure, but .
Still, those deliveries and might not be enough for Mexico to deliver the total amount of water it owes.
Valentin Sanchez, no relation to Rosario Sanchez, says it's just a temporary solution. He's a farmer who's also growing alfalfa in Presidio.
He thinks the relief brought on by the agreement will last "a month, two months." "Once that's over though, the water's gonna run out all over again," he said in Spanish.
Valentin Sanchez says the drought has impacted not just crops along the border, but the entire region and state. Just last year, , which , and they say .
If conditions don't improve, Valentin Sanchez says, he might have to leave behind growing crops and the fields he's known most of his life.
"It's not just affecting the border, it's affecting everything," said Valentin Sanchez.
Mexico and the U.S. plan to meet this summer -–just a few months before the treaty's October deadline-– to evaluate water deposits and rainfall and to see how the changes made so far are working.
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