Declining Rio Grande reservoirs aren't all Mexico's fault

They're Texas' as well.

Note to Strangeabbott et al? It's called climate change.

As for the degree this might have been New Mexico's fault, before a Texas-New Mexico settlement that a 6-3 SCOTUS majority rightly nixed?

Note to Tiffany Lashmet Dowell, who I thought was better than this? The feds rowing their oar in on the Texas-New Mexico Rio Grande deal is not some new version of Agenda 21 or something.

Given that the Texas-New Mexico water settlement could affect "deliverables," which in turn might affect treaty obligations, even if the Supreme Court ruling in the case didn't explictly mention the US-Mexico treaty of 1944 covering both the Rio Grande and the Colorado, it DID mention the nation of Mexico, and thus, the empirical issues behind that treaty. The majority opinion was the right one.

Blame the special water master for not looping the feds in from the start, as the feds had requested.

To use an analogy? And to take it from conditions on that other river of international treaty?

Assume, hypothetically, that there are still portions of the All-American Canal that are not lined by concrete. Picture the state of California claiming that leakage water flows into Mexico. (It probably flows more into the Salton Sea, if there is any, but play along.) Picture, whether as part of negotiations to extend and update the Colorado River Compact, or just a unilateral California declaration, it telling the other six states in the compact that it thinks that water should count as part of US deliverables to Mexico under treaty and so it will increase its take.

The six other states would, in general, laugh. Well, Aridzona would get irate, not laugh.

The feds would also laugh — and then row their oar into the issue. The analogy is complete because both the Colorado River Compact and the original Texas-New Mexico deal on the Rio Grande were completed before the US-Mexico treaty.

There's also the framing issue. Below El Paso, this isn't "Texas" delivering water to Mexico; it's the US. I didn't really care for Dowell going there; it felt close to Texas exceptionalism. The analogy holds here, too. Below Yuma, it's not Aridzona delivering water to Mexico, it's the US.

And, Lashmet also doesn't tell you, which NPR does (though ignoring why Mexico is holding some bits of water) that it has one full five-year cycle after a current one when it's behind the curve to make up a water deficit. As for that why, otherwise? Mexican president Lopez Obrador has been water-stingy since Strangeabbott started putting the razor wire in the river.