The river is shrinking. The bills are rising. The air ranks 2nd worst in the nation. What comes next for the RGV?

Fifteen percent. That is roughly how much of the Rio Grande's natural flow reaches the Gulf each year. Everything else is used up along the 1,900 miles before it gets to us.

I was asked about that number, and a lot more, when a local student named Oscar sat down with me for a short documentary he is making on the water scarcity crisis in the Rio Grande Valley. He is 28 and headed to law school. He wanted to focus on the social and economic side of the crisis, and on the question everyone keeps asking him: what does the future look like here?

I am going to share what I told him. I also went back and checked every number I used, because if I am asking our elected officials to be accountable, I should be held to the same standard. Where I got something wrong or overstated it in the moment, I say so below.

IS THIS A DROUGHT? SOME RESEARCHERS SAY NO.

Oscar's first question was simple. How serious is it?

Serious. Texas Monthly reporter Jack Herrera spent months following the river and reported that some researchers have stopped calling this a drought. They use the word aridification, which describes a long-term drying of the region, not a dry spell that ends.

The Valley depends on two reservoirs, Amistad and Falcon. They are our lifeline. And the river that feeds them carries everything that enters it upstream, on both sides of the border: treated and untreated wastewater, agricultural runoff and whatever else gets into it.

During the interview, I said the Valley gets about 15 percent of what is left. That was imprecise. The accurate figure, from Texas Monthly's reporting, is that about 15 percent of the river's natural flow makes it to the Gulf. The point stands. Very little of this river survives the trip.

WHO USES THE WATER

Oscar asked what everyday people can do. I told him that turning off the faucet will not solve this, because ordinary households are not where most of the water goes.

I said industry uses far more water than people. I need to correct that. Across the Rio Grande basin, the biggest user by far is agriculture, which accounts for roughly 87 percent of human water use, according to Texas Monthly. Industry is a growing concern in the Valley, especially with new data centers, LNG terminals and manufacturing on the way. But farming is the largest share today.

That does not mean farmers are the villains. They are paying for this crisis too.

THE ECONOMY IS ALREADY FEELING IT

The Valley's sugar mill closed in 2024. Those were jobs that families depended on.

This year, more than 20,000 acres of vegetables will go unplanted in South Texas, according to the Texas International Produce Association. Mexico met its minimum delivery under the 1944 Water Treaty for the first year of the new cycle, which ended Oct. 24. But it still owes a large balance from the last cycle, and the Valley's roughly $1 billion farm economy remains exposed.

Poverty in the Valley is already high. When water and electricity get more expensive, families here feel it before almost anyone else.

THE AIR IS PART OF THE SAME STORY

You will hear me say it over and over: you cannot escape the water you drink or the air you breathe.

In its 2026 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association ranked the Brownsville-Harlingen-Raymondville metro second worst in the nation for year-round particle pollution, a new worst-ever value for the area. McAllen-Edinburg ranked 17th.

That is where we stand before most of the new industry arrives.

I also told Oscar that a lot of our particle pollution may be coming from across the border, including smoke from open burning near Matamoros. I have watched those plumes show up on Brownsville's air monitoring. Our elected officials have strong working relationships with leaders in Mexico. They negotiate trade and industry deals across the river. I believe the environment should be on that table too.

WHAT I EXPECT NEXT

Oscar asked what happens when the industrial growth fully arrives. My honest answer: utility bills go up.

That is already starting. McAllen raised water and sewer rates by about $14 a month for the average household to help pay for a brackish groundwater desalination plant. The estimated cost has climbed from $185 million to nearly $205 million. In Brownsville, water and electricity come on the same bill from BPUB. People in Cameron County already send me their bills.

I support desalination. At this point we do not have many other options, and I credit the officials who are moving on it. But it is not cheap and it is not free of problems. It uses a lot of energy, and the leftover brine has to go somewhere. In the interview I guessed McAllen's brine could end up in the Arroyo Colorado. I checked. McAllen's plan includes deep injection wells thousands of feet underground. That is the kind of detail residents should keep watching.

I also told Oscar I worry about gentrification. I believe Starbase and SpaceX are already changing what parts of Cameron County cost to live in. Ten or fifteen years from now, I think we will look back and ask what happened.

CORPUS CHRISTI WAS THE WARNING

Oscar compared us to Corpus Christi, and I agree with him. Corpus Christi spent years courting refineries and export terminals, then came close to a water emergency this year as its reservoirs fell below 10 percent. Rain and floodwater this summer pushed that projected emergency back to September 2028.

In the interview I called Corpus Christi the first city in the U.S. to run short of water. That was not accurate, and I am correcting it here. The lesson still holds. Growth that outruns its water supply does not end well, and the Valley has the chance to learn that from a neighbor instead of the hard way.

OUR INFRASTRUCTURE STILL FLOODS

We still flood every year in parts of the Valley. I mentioned Edinburg North High School, where students walked through standing water in early October, months after a new detention pond was finished. The cause of that flooding has not been publicly explained. When stormwater overwhelms a system, it can carry contamination with it. These are the basics that should be fixed before we invite in industry that needs even more from the same systems.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Oscar's last question was the one I ask myself every day. What can an ordinary person do?

I told him the truth. When a friend and I held a protest in Harlingen over data centers, two people showed up. Me and him.

City and county meetings are often held during work hours. You get three minutes at the podium, and the council usually cannot respond. It is built to be hard.

Go anyway. Post about it. Ask questions in writing. Keep your elected officials accountable. If nobody says anything, they will assume every decision they make is a good one.

That is why I started The 956 Report. People message me every day who feel they have no voice. They do. Our job is to use it before the next big decision is made for us.

Thank you to Oscar for the questions, and for caring enough about this place to make a film about it.

SOURCES

Texas Monthly, "The War for the Rio Grande," Jack Herrera, 2026

Texas Standard interview with Jack Herrera, September 2026

American Lung Association, State of the Air 2026

RGV Business Journal, Oct. 31, 2026, on Mexico's treaty deliveries and unplanted acreage (Texas International Produce Association)

The Monitor (myrgv.com), Oct. 17, 2025, Aug. 18, 2026 and Sept. 21, 2026, on McAllen's desalination plant and rate increase

KEDT and Corpus Christi Caller-Times, July 2026, on Corpus Christi's projected water emergency