Concrete lining far from silver for Mexicans

From Capital Press:

Despite its name, the All-American Canal has been leaking water to the Mexican side of the desert border for more than 60 years, nourishing alfalfa, onion and cotton crops that might otherwise wither.

Now the U.S. government is preparing to line the earthen channel with concrete. Mexican farmers’ loss will be California’s gain: Scarce water that will no longer be able to seep away instead will help flush toilets and water lawns more than 100 miles west in San Diego.

And that would affect thousands of families whose fields cover thousands of acres around Mexicali, an industrial city of 800,000 that is gobbling up farmland on its outskirts. That’s because the lining would prevent the replenishment of about 100 rural wells they use, according to critics of the project.

Nazario Ortiz, who farms 100 acres about three miles inside Mexico, worries that his hardscrabble community won’t survive.

“Everything comes from the canal, so everything is going to be ruined,” said Ortiz, 46, who lives in a village where old pickup trucks and unleashed dogs share dirt roads. “How are people going to make a living?”

It will be hard, Ortiz says, to stop his sons – ages 22, 18 and 16 – from illegally crossing the border to join relatives in Los Angeles.

...

The project to line 23 miles of the canal is slated to begin this summer and be completed in 2008. Project managers expect that the refit canal will capture enough water for 135,000 new homes, mostly in San Diego and its suburbs.

It seems that legally, Mexico has indeed been using water, so one could imagine the prior appropriation law coming into play... though of course Californians would claim that the water was never actually ever appropriated to Mexicans.

It is certainly true that water transfers are all about third party impacts.