Mexico and the United States announced they have reached an agreement that they hope will address Mexico’s habit of falling behind on water sharing payments in the Rio Bravo basin, also known as the Rio Grande.

The agreement announced Saturday provides Mexico with the tools and flexibility to distribute water earlier on a five-year cycle under the 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty, according to the bilateral International Boundary and Water Commission.

Suggested tools include better coordination on water conservation, reuse, alternative water sources and other measures.

The agreement operates in five-year cycles and allows Mexico to assume the water debt in the first four years if it can make up for it in the fifth year. This left Mexico behind, hoping that hurricanes or other heavy rains would dump water into the border area.

This frustrated Texas farmers who needed a predictable water supply. If a hurricane or tropical storm hits the area, Mexico may be able to catch up, but water isn’t needed at that point and that doesn’t always happen. Mexico has long used this wait-and-hope strategy, but it has caused problems both domestically and in the United States in the past.

Mexico is obligated to provide 350,000 acre-feet of water per year for 5 years, or approximately 1.75 million acre-feet (2.15 billion cubic meters) of water. One acre of water is enough to fill a field with one foot of water. In contrast, the United States delivers more water to Mexico than any other water source further west.

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But in the current cycle, which started in 2020, Mexico has delivered only 425,000 acre-feet in total so far; that’s just a quarter of its debt for the five-year period ending October 2025.

Mexico must release water from dams on tributaries that feed the Rio Grande, but this angers Mexican farmers who want the water for themselves and call it “our water.” The agreement gives the United States rights to one-third of the flow from six Mexican tributaries.

In 2020, a dispute over US water payments turned violent; Angry farmers pushed back National Guard troops guarding a dam because Mexico had fallen behind on payments this cycle and had to quickly deliver water to the United States.

Mexico sent National Guard officers to protect the La Boquilla dam in 2020, but hundreds of farmers pushed them back hundreds of meters in a failed attempt to seize the dam’s control room.

Before that, farmers had taken over another dam near the border town of Ojinaga. Both dams are located west of the Big Bend region, near the Texas border.

During the 2020 conflict, Mexican farmers also burned vehicles and blocked railway lines. In the end, in a face-saving solution, the United States allowed Mexico to cede rights to water held in shared international reservoirs.