Supreme Court denies New Mexico-Texas motion to resolve Rio Grande dispute without federal input

New Mexico and Texas are unable to move forward with an agreement aimed at resolving a decade-old dispute over the management of the Rio Grande due to their failure to include the federal government in the process.

The Supreme Court on Fridaydenied a motionmade by the two states, along with neighboring Colorado, to sign a consent decree on the matter and instead upheld an exception made by the United States.

The consent decree outlined how New Mexico and Texas would resolve previous discrepancies over how the former delivered water to the latter. But the US maintained that the proposed deal was inconsistent with a historic pact and would require the federal government to adhere to protocols it had not approved.

“We agree with the United States,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in the opinion issued Friday morning.

“Although interstate compacts are (as the name suggests) agreements between states, ‘we sometimes allow the federal government to participate in compact actions to defend “distinctly federal interests,”‘” Jackson wrote, citing a case Maryland v. Louisiana 1981 as precedent.

The current case has roots in the 1938sRio Grande Pact— an agreement that served to supervise the use of rivers in three US states, through a debit-credit system that accounts for changes in hydrological conditions. Historically, New Mexico drew 57% of the Rio Grande’s domestic flow, while 43% was sent to Texas.

Obig River, which flows for 1,896 miles from its headwaters in southwestern Colorado through New Mexico and Texas, also forms the U.S.-Mexico border and serves 20 tribal nations in New Mexico and two in Texas. As for Mexico, the US signed a separate water sharing agreementagreementwith its southern neighbor in 1906.

Jackson noted in the court’s opinion Friday that “the Compact is inextricably intertwined with the Rio Grande Project and the Downstream Contracts” — referring to contracts that require the U.S. to facilitate the supply of water from New Mexico to Texas. When the pact was enacted, these contracts had already been negotiated, he stressed the opinion.

If New Mexico, for example, were to interfere with its water supply, the federal Bureau of Reclamation “could prove unable to meet its obligations under the Downstream Contracts,” Jackson continued.

Regarding the U.S. commitment to Mexico, the opinion argued that “the ability of the United States to supply water to Mexico depends on New Mexico’s compliance with ‘its Covenant obligations.’” Any violation of the pact, the document explains, could undermine the government’s capacity. to fulfill these duties.

“The United States has its own uniquely federal claims under the Compact,” Jackson said. “If that didn’t happen, one might wonder why we allowed the Federal Government to intervene in the first place.”

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story