El Paso Times
El Paso's Water Costs Will Swell, Experts Say
May 31, 2001
By Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
Experts at a water summit Wednesday said El Pasoans aren't going to run out of water in the near future, but they must get ready to pay more for turning on the tap.
"Water is available. There are vast amounts available. We are not going to dry up and blow away," said U.S. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, who spearheaded Water Summit-2001 at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Ed Archuleta, general manager of El Paso Water Utilities, said that Reyes is right and that his message does not contradict the basis for El Paso's efforts at water conservation.
"We're not going to run out of water. ... We are going to run out of the cheap water," Archuleta said.
The options to ensure a steady water supply are expensive, and until the federal government steps in to help, El Paso "must continue to be cautious," he said.
At the summit, Archuleta pushed desalination as the least expensive way to replenish El Paso's dwindling ground-water supplies, especially the Hueco Bolson.
Archuleta said he hopes to enlist Fort Bliss in a joint desalination project. The El Paso plant would cost about $52 million and would produce 20 million gallons a day of drinkable water from the Hueco Bolson.
Although water usage is down -- 159 gallons a person today compared with 201 gallons in the early 1990s -- ground water is still pumped 25 times faster than it is replenished.
Desalination would push salty water through filters to remove microbes and brackish particles. The utility would blend 10 million gallons of the desalinated water with an equal amount of lesser-quality water to stretch the city's water supply.
Doug Rittmann, a water consultant who teaches at UTEP, said it would be cheaper to "blend treated waste water with an equal amount of Rio Grande water. ... This would double the available supply of water to El Paso."
He said desalination is "a far more expensive process."
Rittman, who's worked on water issues for 30 years, said El Paso has two plants capable of doing what he proposes.
El Paso draws its water from the Mesilla and Hueco bolsons and the Rio Grande. Juárez, with 1.2 million residents, gets all of its drinking water from the Hueco Bolson.
No one from the Juárez Water and Sewerage Council, the city's water utility, attended the summit.
Reyes said that although someone from the Elephant Butte Water Irrigation District was in the audience, district officials declined to participate as panelists.
El Paso County Commissioner Miguel Teran, a panelist at the summit, caught the attention of other panelists when he said there are 50,000 colonia residents in his district who "do not have water at all."
"We (the county) decided that rather than invest $50 million in a sportsplex, we would invest it in water," Teran said.
During a break, members of the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization rebuted Teran's figure of El Pasoans without water.
"At most, there might be 2,000 people without water, but not 50,000," said Teddi Trujillo, spokeswoman for EPISO and a veteran in the fight to get water to El Paso's colonias.
Trujillo urged Teran to get his facts right.
He responded: "If you add them all up, you come up with 50,000 ... 20,000, 30,000 what's the difference?"
Turf battles explored
During the summit, experts from Texas, New Mexico and Mexico explored the range of issues that water officials regularly deal with, from complex international water treaties to local and regional turf battles.
They said future water availability depends on such things as converting irrigation water to urban use, importing water from other regions and reallocating certain water resources.
Maria E. Giner, a regional planner with the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, said she was surprised by the number of entities she has to deal with on the U.S. side when it comes to water.
In contrast, "in Mexico the federal government (controls) water rights, and the flow of information is smoother," she said.
Giner also said per capita water consumption in Juárez is half of what it is in
El Paso, which rules out conservation as an option for Juarenses.
Experts conceded that their greatest frustration was the red tape that comes with dealing with dozens or more agencies that have a say in how water resources are used.
Archuleta said he would like to see a U.S. federal agency appointed that would oversee and coordinate the border region's water-planning efforts.
"The most logical agency would be the Environmental Protection Agency," Archuleta said. "It deals with water quality issues ... and it has the resources."
Institution recommended
John Bernal, a former commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission, said it's important to have a government "institution" when it comes to conducting international relations.
The Border Environment Cooperation Commission and North American Development Bank are nongovernmental, he said.
Eliud Martinez, a former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, recommended using federal pressure only to force local disputing parties to work through their differences.
Bill Addington, a water activist, said that while he supported the summit's purpose, he was disappointed that it did not include "all the key players in the all-important issue of water."
Others criticized the panels for failing to include environmentalists and other nongovernmental organizations that represent the public.
At the end of the daylong summit, Reyes said the gathering accomplished its goal.
"We all have a better understanding of what the issues are, and we were able to bring to the table for the first time some of the key players and stakeholders," he said. "This summit is but the first of several major events that will focus on working issues involving waste-water flood control and other water-related issues."
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