This time, it concerns water. The end result: citrus farming, once a booming commodity in the Rio Grande Valley, may soon cease to exist.

“The people who farm here in the middle Rio Grande Valley don’t have the ability to use that saved-up water from spring to irrigate now in the late summer,” Fleck said.

But it takes water to grow those crops, and reservoirs on the Rio Grande are shrinking, leaving less water both for farming and the 1.4 million people who live in the Valley.

Walking along the Rio Grande in central New Mexico, retired ecologist Gina Dello Russo points to a sandbar at the river’s ...

The Rio Grande Valley region would not have enough water to meet demand for cities, farming, and power generation if the state were struck by a historic drought, similar to the one in the 1950s ...

The Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers’ sugar mill in Santa Rosa. Two years of drought and a dwindling water supply forced Texas’ last sugar mill to close after more than 50 years of operation.

The Rio Grande roared back to life as irrigation flows resumed from Caballo Lake. The annual release of water Friday, May 30, marks the start of the irrigation season, sending an estimated 25,000 ...

Mike England surveys a field on his farm near Mercedes on April 18. England had to destroy 500 acres worth of sugar cane he'd grown because of the ongoing drought in the Rio Grande Valley.