On Tuesday, September 14, the WRRC hosted the webinar Binational Cooperation in the Colorado River Basin: United States and Mexico, featuring US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) Binational Program Manager Amy Witherall and Analyst Sean Schrag-Toso. The timely webinar coincided with the appointment of the new Commissioners to both the US and Mexico Sections of the International Boundary and Water Commission. US Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner attended the webinar and offered some special remarks at the start of the event. Read more about Mexico’s Commissioner, Adriana Reséndez Maldonado, below in this issue of the Weekly Wave. Following Commissioner Giner’s remarks, Witherall began the presentation with a question to the audience, “What one word do you associate with the US/Mexico relationship on the Colorado River?” Audience responses generated a word cloud with “complicated” and “uneven” emerging as the most-entered answers.
After setting the stage for the presentation, Witherall gave an overview of Reclamation’s water management in the West and put the topic of binational cooperation in a river basin in a global context. She noted that in the US, almost all of our borderlands are in a transboundary river basin.
Amy Witherall is the Binational Program Manager for the Lower Colorado Basin Region of the Bureau of Reclamation. She was an integral part of the development and negotiation of Minutes 319 and 323 to the 1944 U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty and plays a key role in their implementation. Prior to working on binational efforts, Amy managed water planning studies in partnership with Southern California stakeholders. She earned her master’s degree in International Environmental Policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She lives in southern California with her husband and two sons.
Sean Schrag-Toso joined the Binational Program at the Bureau of Reclamation in July 2020 as a Presidential Management Fellow after graduating from the University of Arizona with a master's degree in Hydrology and Water Resources and a graduate certificate in Water Policy. Previously, Sean was a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama and worked as an assistant engineer on water resources projects in Southern Arizona.
Estuary. June 18, 2021. Photo Credit: Eliana Rodríguez Burgueño, UABC
