Fact-checking Texas Monthly on Rio Grande water supply

The Monthly never responds on either Hucksterman or Shitter, so when reporter Jack Herrera, on his personal Shitter account, asked for feedback on "The War for the Rio Grande," he got it.

It's good in some ways, but has a mix of errors and Texas exceptionalism hyperbole.

First, if one goes by more than water supply, per American Rivers, neither the Rio Grande nor the Colorado is on the ten most endangered list. (Both have been on its list in the past, the Colorado more often, the Rio Grande more recently, aka last year.)

Second, no, Geronimo didn't flee from Arizona into Chihuahua, it was into Sonora. 

The Colorado gets more headlines because it passes through more states, and more, because a lot more agriculture depends on it than the Rio Grande. So does more urban water supply.

The High Plains, not the small, HIGH-elevation San Luis Valley, is the heart of Colorado's ag industry. The Grand Junction area with its orchard fruits is arguably No. 2.

You're totally right on the 1944 treaty, but could go further. It needs to be redone. 

I disagree with you on not targeting certain crops. Lots of pecans like the ones Rogers grows sell overseas, just like the alfalfa you mentioned going to Saudi Arabia. Yes, Rogers has a market — and outside of Trump tariff stupidity, a lot of that market is in China.

El Paso scientists are right — the drought in the Southwest is expected to last the rest of this century, due to climate change. Water recycling has been done in LA's Southland for what, a decade or more? Here in Texas, Wichita Falls started it a few years ago. Neither one may have as fancy of an operation as El Paso plans, but the concept in action is itself not new. If there's something special and new in El Paso's details, it should have been spelled out more. Saying it's "the first of its kind in the nation" is incomplete at best and possibly inaccurate at worst unless it's massively different from others.

I concluded by telling Herrera what I start with here and I was waiting to see if anything would be different this time on responsiveness. 

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A second piece, whether prequel or sequel, is better. 

Setting aside Herrera's untruths about the San Luis Valley as the heart of Colorado agriculture (pre-Spanish entrada, it wasn't, either; that would be Colorado's part of the Four Corners) his story about his trip to the headwaters of the Rio Grande is more worth it. I've not hiked to the headwaters myself, but I've been to Creede, and have hiked in American and Yankee basins on the west side of the Continental Divide just above the headwaters.

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Sidebar: Neither story has the magic phrase "climate change."