Farmers from Tamaulipas warn about damages due to lack of transfer of the El Cuchillo dam

Monterey, NL. The producers of irrigation district 026 of Tamaulipasexpect that this coming November 1, the National Water Commission (With water) complies with the transfer from the dam The knife to Marta R. GómezOtherwise, more than 1,760 producers would have a decrease of 100,000 tons in their crops of sorghum y cornindicated Raul Garcia Vallejoleader of the League of Agrarian Communities of Tamaulipasat a local television discussion table.

In turn, the PRI deputy, Edgardo Melhem Salinaspresident of the Rural Development Commission of the Congress of Tamaulipasexplained that there is a 1996 agreement to set the rules for the transfer of El Cuchillo to the Marte R. Gómez dam, where the waters downstream from the San Juan River reached the irrigation district 026, before the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to build the El Cuchillo Dam.

For this reason, it was agreed that every November 1 the transfer of El Cuchillo to the Marte R. Gómez dam should be carried out, in the event that El Cuchillo accumulates more than 315 million cubic meters and Marte R. Gómez stores less than 700 million. of cubic meters, which is fulfilled, because El Cuchillo has 762 million cubic meters, hence Conagua must determine the transfer, stressed the legislator.

Melhem Salinas recalled that on October 3, a point of agreement was signed unanimously in the local Congress, to request Conagua to declare how many million cubic meters the transfer will be, since the producers require a minimum of 250 million cubic meters. for your crops.

“We call on the Conagua River Basin, which defines the regulation, because producers should already be asking for credits to prepare for the next agricultural cycle, but they are not authorized given the uncertainty of whether or not there will be enough water.” , stressed the PRI legislator.

New Leon posture

The governor Samuel Garcia Sepulvedamentioned in recent days that this Monday, October 31, he will meet with Conagua authorities to define whether the transfer from El Cuchillo to the Marte R. Gómez dam in Tamaulipas will be carried out.

As will be recalled, on September 27, 2022, the president assured that this year there would be no transfer of water to the Marte R. Gómez dam, due to the fact that the President of the Republic issued a decree on July 29, to attend to the emergency due to shortage of drinking water for urban and domestic public use in the metropolitan area, which is above the agreement with Tamaulipas.

“I am in talks every day with Conagua, and this year specifically there is a presidential decree that I worked with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which indicates, from June 6 to December 31, a water crisis emergency.”

“That decree is well above the (transfer) agreement, legally speaking, that presidential decree, which is a decree law of the federal executive, is above that agreement, which states that there can be no transfer because the human right to water is above that of irrigation”, emphasized the president.

On October 1, Samuel García was invited to the swearing-in of the new governor of Tamaulipas, Americo Villarrealand only commented to the local press: “we came to greet our friend Governor Américo Villarreal (…) we are going to see that the Conagua authority is the one in charge (of making the transfer decision), it is the empowered one.”

In context

After the strongest drought of the last 30 years in Nuevo León, from February to August, it caused the depletion of the tight hill y Mouthand only about 5,000 liters per second could be extracted from the El Cuchillo dam.

The demand for the metropolitan area was 16,000 liters per second. The state government undertook a campaign, establishing supply schedules, detecting clandestine intakes and enabling more than 100 shallow wells and more than 20 deep wells, as well as bringing hundreds of water trucks to serve neighborhoods that had no supply, and had the support of companies to temporarily transfer water from their wells.

The prey El Cuchillo is the largest reservoir in Nuevo León, with a storage capacity of 1,123 million cubic meters. With the rains of September and this month, to date it has 762,342 million cubic meters of storage, which represents a 67.88% of its capacity and this Sunday, October 30, there was an extraction of 5,224 liters per second.

Cerro Prieto, is the second dam with the largest capacity for 300 million cubic meters, has been recovered and currently has a filling of 57,300 million cubic meters, that is 19.10% of filling, and 1,990 liters per second are being extracted. The smallest reservoir that is La Boca, with 35 million cubic meters, has an accumulated of 27,380 million cubic meters, and is at 78.22%, and 885 liters per second are extracted, according to data from Conagua.