May 29th

Of course you all know how terribly hot it is here in the Valley. I have been here since 1987 and never saw such hot temps. day after day the same A few showers the last couple days did not bring much relief. I did not attend the Memorial Day Potluck but there are quite a few pictures on Facebook. Ken did a great job on the chicken and the Mariachi band that entertained was really neat. Here is what I read today on my computer about our water supply down here

As the spring sunshine continues to scorch, the combined storage at the two international reservoirs that supply the bulk of the Rio Grande Valley’s freshwater has done something it hasn’t done in decades — fallen below 20%. “Everything that we had forecast is happening. We’re dwindling in our supply. There’s no indication that Mexico will do anything for us,” Sonny Hinojosa, general manager for Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2, said Tuesday. “It’s pretty bleak,” he said. Together, the United States’ share of water stored at the Falcon and Amistad international reservoirs stood at just 19.7% total conservation capacity as of May 18, according to data published by the International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC. The IBWC publishes the report every Saturday using data that are about a week old. That’s how much time it takes for the commission — which oversees a binational 1944 water sharing treaty between the U.S. and Mexico — to figure out how much of that water belongs to the Valley. That May 18 figure is a worrying number for Hinojosa. It represents the second-lowest volume of American water in nearly 30 years. The last time the levels fell below 20% was in August 1998, according to Jim Darling, former McAllen mayor and president of the Region M Water Planning Group. It’s been a tough year for Valley water. The binational treaty obligates Mexico to deliver some 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. in five-year cycles. But well into the fourth year of the current cycle, Mexico has delivered only about 384,000 acre feet, or about one year’s worth, of water. That has, in turn, caused the two reservoirs to hover at dangerously low levels for months. Each week the reservoirs continue to plummet at a rate of about four-tenths of a percent per week, Hinojosa said.