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WESLACO – Enthusiasm for improving water delivery systems in northern Mexico is running high. That's the assessment of Texas Agricultural Experiment Station officials who have hosted Mexican stakeholders on a series of recent tours of the Rio Grande Valley's agricultural community.
Mexican growers, irrigation district operators and government officials have made several trips to South Texas to learn about the water-saving techniques and technologies used here.
"Even as we strive to continue to improve our own water delivery systems to be more efficient, the Mexicans we've hosted are highly interested in what we've done," said Dr. Juan Enciso, an Experiment Station irrigation engineer at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Weslaco.
"In fact, they are already implementing some of our on-farm, water-saving techniques, such as leveling land to improve drainage and the use of polypipe," he said. "Saving water on both sides of the Rio Grande is important because we both draw water from the same source."
Polypipe is a flexible plastic pipe, generally 12 to 21 inches in diameter, that growers here use to improve efficiency and decrease labor costs.
Tony Hinojosa, assistant to the president for Latin American affairs at Texas A&M-Kingsville, was invited to Mexico after hosting a tour of Valley citrus farms, irrigation districts and packing houses earlier this month.
Hinojosa was asked to attend a meeting called by Tamaulipas state representative Maria Eugenia De Leon, who chairs the state's border issues committee and is secretary of the rural development committee.
"Representative De Leon announced she would leverage state and federal funds to implement as soon as possible many of the water-saving technologies we demonstrated to her and her constituents recently, including underground pipes, land leveling, polypipe, and drip and micro-jet irrigation," Hinojosa said.
Oton Garcia, a De Leon constituent and grower who took part in the tours, said, "We don't need to make massive changes to accomplish big things in Mexico. We can take many small steps, one at a time, to eventually save large amounts of water."
The Mexican government operated irrigation districts in northern Mexico until about 10 years ago when officials realized mismanagement and inefficiency were causing the systems to deteriorate, Enciso said.
Authority was transferred to the Asociacion de Usuario de Riego, or Water Users Association, whose employees have taken part in the tours.
While the Mexican government still maintains the main canals, water user organizations operate secondary canals that carry water from the main canals to the delivery point at farms.
"Right now, they require a lot of money to upgrade their systems," Enciso said. "But first, as we do in South Texas, they have to define their priorities and define who pays for what."
Infrastructure necessities include substituting canals with pipe systems, lining leaky canals, and in some instances, pumping water through pipes in order to use smaller pipe diameters and increase water delivery efficiency, he said.
Enciso and Texas Cooperative Extension county agents Brad Cowan and Enrique Perez are organizing a tour for Valley citrus growers in October. They will visit citrus farms in Montemorelos, Mexico.
The tours and other international water-related activities are funded by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The grant proposal was submitted in 2002 by Dr. Ron Rosati at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Dr. Juan Vega at Monterrey Tech in Monterrey, Mexico.
For more information, contact Enciso at (956) 968-5581, or e-mail mailto:j-enciso@tamu.edu