(The Center Square) – South Texas is getting more water from Mexico and a new facility has opened to prevent the New World screwworm from crossing the Texas-Mexico border. It’s the only facility of its kind in the U.S., located in south Texas in Edinburg.
Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins met with farmers and ranchers in South Texas Monday to discuss recent successes after months of collaboration among federal and state partners.
For years, Abbott called on the Biden administration to enforce a 1944 treaty to require Mexico to deliver water to South Texas. He got no response. Under the Trump administration, negotiations and agreements took roughly one year. Last month, Mexico agreed to deliver a minimum of 350,000-acre feet of water a year to the U.S., the State Department and USDA announced. The agreement was reached after the Trump administration repeatedly claimed the Mexican government would comply but hadn’t, The Center Square reported.
Last May, Rollins claimed Mexico would comply, but it hadn’t by the end of the year, prompting Abbott to again demand Mexico fulfill its treaty obligation, pointing to a potential solution proposed by Texas U.S. senators, The Center Square reported.
A 1944 Treaty of Utilization of Waters governs water usage between the U.S. and Mexico, including from two international reservoirs, Lake Amistad and Falcon Lake in Texas along the international border. Mexico has historically released water storage from Lake Amistad to Mexican growers, not to Texas growers, and the U.S. federal government hasn’t enforced the treaty. Under the Biden administration, Mexican officials killed any agreements to release water, forcing Texas’ last sugar mill to close. Now, Mexican officials are complying.
“Thank you to President Trump for stepping up and doing more than any other president has ever done to enforce this treaty,” Abbott said at an event in Mission. He was joined by Texas agriculture producers, members of the Lone Star Citrus Growers and Texas Farm Bureau, among others. “The urgency of it was heard at this roundtable today. We have an obligation to ensure more water goes to the men and women who grow crops in our state.”
Also on Monday, Abbott and Rollins officially opened a new Domestic New World Screwworm Sterile Fly Dispersal Facility in Edinburg to prevent the NWS from reaching Texas.
“America is going to take care of ourselves, including dealing with the approach of screwworm as it gets closer to our border,” Abbott said. “We put together the resources necessary for Texas to provide a Texas-size response to this. We thank Secretary Rollins and President Trump for stepping forward to provide the stop gap effort essential to protecting our ranchers and our wildlife.”
Last month, Abbott issued a disaster declaration for the NWS as cases were confirmed 70 miles from the Texas-Mexico border, The Center Square reported. Last August, the USDA invested $750 million to build the first U.S.-based facility in Edinburg located at Moore Air Force Base. The facility was built with the Army Corps of Engineers to produce up to 300 million sterile flies a week. It is the only sterile fly facility in the U.S.
“This sterile fly dispersal facility was a high priority project, and our team delivered it in record time,” Rollins said. “This new facility is a monumental achievement for our domestic preparedness efforts, but we are also diligently working to stop the spread of screwworm in Mexico, conduct extensive trapping and surveillance along the border, increase U.S. response capacity, and encourage innovative solutions.”
No NWS has been found in livestock in the U.S.
A NWS case was confirmed in Maryland in someone who returned from El Salvador last August, The Center Square reported.
Last month, a horse from Argentina at an equine import facility in Florida was found to have an open wound with larvae. It was tested and confirmed to be NWS, the USDA said. The horse was immediately treated with medication and remains in quarantine.
The most recent NWS confirmations have occurred nearly every day for the last two years in Mexico within 400 miles of the U.S., according to a USDA tracker. More than 15,000 confirmed NWS cases have been reported in Mexico, with the most in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Yucatan and Tabasco.
The most recent confirmed cases are in Veracruz, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas, in cows, dogs, horses and pigs. The USDA is dispersing 100 million sterile insects per week in Mexico, it says.
