Before You Go to a Charrette

From a City of El Paso press release an additional ASARCO Hands-On Design Session (Charrette) has been scheduled for tomorrow from 9 until Noon at Mesita Elementary. Director of Planning Matthew McElroy said, "In an effort to accommodate our citizens' eagerness to participate in the future of their community, we are adding a second hands-on session for ASARCO."

I have a suggestion before you go. Take a ride along the Rio Grande. Just off the Highway 180 into Anapra, NM along Highway 273/McNutt Road you will see the Carousel Convenience Store, a familiar old building and landmark. Travel south down the dirt road behind the store and stay to your left. You will pass where an old refinery once stood. There is virtually no growth on that land. Note the relationship of that dead land to the Rio Grande. See the test wells along the riverside. Look at the ditching to the river. Of course, as you travel down that road and go across an old wooden bridge to return to Paisano/Highway 180, you will be overshadowed by ASARCO and its mighty smokestack. Out of that stack once spewed cadmium, lead and arsenic . . . and clandestinely, during the 90s, residues from the illegal burning of toxic wastes from the military. All of those heavy metals and residues aren't just on ASARCO property, they are in the soil of the hills that run along the Rio Grande and get washed into the river along with the run-off from the contaminated soil from the old refinery.

And downstream? First there is the American Dam and then the EPWU pumping station that begins to send treated water uphill - first to Sunset Heights and then to a station near my neighborhood at Paul Moreno Elementary and then higher. Up and up so it can go down and down into our homes as the water we use for drinking, watering our gardens and bathing in. I don't for a moment believe that none of those toxic contaminants from ASARCO or other industries just remain in the soil. Capping the grounds at ASARCO property in preparation for a dream development does nothing to the land beyond the ASARCO and, in the opinion of many, the runoff that will occur below that cap flowing into the Rio Grande past the American dam into the pump station at Canal Road and up and up so it can be consumed by you and me.

So, before you go to the charrette and imagine all the cool ways that the ASARCO land can be used, perhaps a little tour first wouldn't hurt.

Just a thought.