Where's the Rio Grande?

Even if you don't speak Spanish, you will understand that the Rio Grande means 'Great River'. Numerous westerns featured this once majestic river that serves as part of the natural border between the US state of Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

In the past, the Rio Grande would run through Las Cruces, the second-largest city in New Mexico (USA) for the irrigation season from February to October. But in 2020, the river didn’t flow until March, and was dry by September. In 2021 it is estimated that water levels will be so low they won’t arrive until June and it will probably be gone again at the end of July.

So, the Rio Grande changed from a great river to just a trickle. What happened?

The Rio Grande’s flow was always variable, but drying up completely was an extraordinary event until the 1890s.

Due to (supposed) climate change or the lasting effects of El Niño, hotter and drier seasons are reducing the snowpack that melts to feed the Rio Grande, and rising temperatures are increasing evaporation from the reservoirs. Because of this, the river has had just seven years with a 'full supply' of water in the past 20, and only two in the past decade.

In Las Cruces, the Rio Grande’s flow is diverted and drained, flooding into pecan orchards and feeding crops like onions, corn and famously green chillis, for which the state is known. But New Mexico is mostly desert and it can only support agriculture because of irrigation. Despite making up only about 2.4% of New Mexico’s GDP, the agriculture and processing industry receives three-quarters of the state’s surface and groundwater.

So much water is diverted, that when the growing season ends, nothing is left in the river near Las Cruces.

It not climate change or the effects of El Niño but the increased demands of agriculture that hasn't any right to be in the desert that is the principal cause of the disappearance of the once great Rio Grande.