Mexico rejects U.S. court ruling on border canal project, weighs legal options

Source: International Herald Tribune

Mexico rejects U.S. court ruling on border canal project, weighs legal options
The Associated Press
Published: April 10, 2007

MEXICO CITY: Mexico has rejected a court ruling allowing the U.S. government to line a border canal with concrete to prevent leakage, saying the project will harm the environment and Mexican farmers.

"The government is reviewing, in contact with parties potentially affected by the ruling, the legal options available" for challenging the project further, the Foreign Relations and Environment departments said in a statement Monday.

At stake is the lining of the All-American Canal to save an estimated 67,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the needs of more than 500,000 homes — that currently seeps out of the canal.

Environmental and farming groups say the US$200 million (€150 million) project would dry up tens of thousands of acres (hectares) of farmland in Mexico's Mexicali Valley and threaten migratory birds by eliminating wetlands. That in turn, they say, could cause job losses and other economic problems on both sides of the border.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/10/america/LA-GEN-Mexico-US-Canal.php

Which traditionally flowed into Mexico. The U.S. is effectively trying to steal this water.

From an environmental standpoint, this is a tough call. Before the canal was built, this region was all desert. The towns that existed were tiny little hardscrabble villages, and farming really wasn't practiced because the water wasn't there. When the US built the AAC, we did a shoddy job of it and the thing began leaking all over the desert. Quick thinking Mexicans built their own canals to trap this runoff, and used it to convert the desert into farms. The areas where the water wasn't trapped converted into marshy wetlands. The original desert ecosystem in that region was killed off and replaced with a man-made one.

By lining the canal, the runoff will stop, and the region will revert back to its original form. I realize that will have economic consequences for the people that live there, but from an environmental standpoint this is actually a restorative action, and not a destructive one. Since desert ecosystems are just as deserving of protection as wetland ecosystems are, and since the region was naturally a desert ecosystem, I think the environmental argument against the project fails.

I refer to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase.

The USA is perfectly within its rights to conserve water by fixing leaks in the canal.

Caveat: I am a resident of San Diego, and would benefit by the proposed canal lining. Water is often scarce here.