A water dispute between the United States and Mexico that goes back decades is turning increasingly urgent in Texas communities that rely on the Rio Grande. Their leaders are now demanding the Mexican government either share water or face cuts in U.S. aid.
In a deepening diplomatic conflict, Mexico is behind in obligations under an 80-year-old treaty that governs cross-border flows of the drought-stricken Colorado River. It has for decades resisted water deliveries to the United States from its reservoirs in the Rio Grande basin as it faces its own drought pressures on thirsty and valuable crops bound for sale across the border.
It’s terrible. Small volumes are teaspoons and tablespoons, then in ounces (rarely disambiguated from the same word being used for small weights as “fluid ounces”) then we have cups, pints, quarts (quarter of a gallon), gallons. Then we get crazy and start with cubes, cubic feet, yards (usually not referred to as cubic yards, but they are) and then acre-feet. I’m fine with distances and weights in freedom units, but I yearn for metric when it comes to volumes.