Another Big, Ugly Pit

Mounds of dirt wait to be hauled out of EPWU moonscaped retention pond along Scenic Drive

A little over two years ago members of the Newman Park Neighborhood Association met with top officials of El Paso Water Utilities. Their concern was the planned "clean-up" of the Altura detention pond. Neighbors wanted assurances that trees and other native vegetation would be preserved as much as possible. The EPWU corporate brass promised that trees would be preserved and only some vegetation would be removed to create a truck lane into the pond. When the project was done, neighbors were stunned to see a moonscape. Trees and other vegetation all around the pond had been scraped, bulldozed and hauled off.

Now EPWU is finishing work on another retention pond off the side of Scenic Drive. Same thing: trees and other vegetation have been scraped, bulldozed and hauled off. A road from a lower reservoir was cut into the hillside and loose asphalt was spread on it to make it easier for trucks to haul off the sand. A moonscape replaces the flora and fauna - a moonscape which is not exactly what the "scenic" in Scenic Sunday is all about.

Certainly, work must be done to clean out the ponds to prevent massive stormwater runoff. However, can it not be done in such a way so that native plants and wildlife are not destroyed and El Pasoans and their guests are not looking at just one more big ugly pit? A citizen raised the issue of the Scenic Drive pond at an LRC meeting yesterday in the context of a new grading ordinance. City Engineer Alan Shubert explained that the reality is that utility is not bound by the grading ordinances. Why not?

These great big pits attract one thing: plastic bags and other litter. Elpasonaturally will be keeping an eye out for the "re-vegetation" of this storm pit with plastic and glass debris and will publish the pictures.

The bigger question is the need for a PSB policy to remediate land for erosion control, restoration of native plants and habitat and, in many instances, rainwater harvesting. As Professor John Walton said at Monday's stakeholders meeting on Arroyo 41A in his lecture ("Reducing Stormwater Costs with Low Impact Designs"): "Current stormwater engineering practices in El Paso are based primarily on dated designs from different climates and landscapes."

One of the more interesting revelations that came out of EPWU VP of Operations John Balliew's presentation at the stakeholders meeting is that PSB has a land management plan of selling land and preserving only that land necessary for stormwater management. They want to get the maximum dollar amount that they can for their land. (All of this probably explains their resistance to any kind of downzoning in an effort to preserve natural open space.) After all, they will need lots of money to sustain what is ultimately unsustainable: the water that they mine in the bolsons. El Paso is just getting too large, too fast and it appears that they are managing the demand on water by making sure that they get more money in the bank with land sales. Of course, they get the money along with encouraging sprawl at the same time. This raises more questions: besides desalinization (which buys us a few decades), is anyone at EPWU looking at rainwater harvesting and stormwater practices more relevant to our climate and landscape?

(Bill Addington, a member of the Open Space Advisory Board, made a good point at the last meeting: sprawl can be limited just by refusing to meter. Build all you like . . . you just won't get hooked up to the water supply. After s recent hike through the lower northwest arroyos, we (the Sunrise Hikers) returned to our cars by way of an expensive new development full of empty houses and those ominous signs that say "Corporate Owned" - i.e., foreclosed upon. And we want to encourage more sprawl by controlling an arroyo, 41A, in the only manner that El Paso engineers seem to know - single channel and concrete it and build one huge retention pond that will forever alter the arroyo?)

New sign at Palisades reveals minimal open space land use policy. Click on image to enlarge and read.

Sooner or later, PSB will have to come up with a realistic land management policy for its open space that takes into account practices beyond just scraping huge pits into the ground and preserving land for developers to bid on while destroying vegetation and wildlife - a plan that optimizes attractions to eco-tourism and preserves natural beauty and open space and enforces laws against illegal dumping - something PSB doesn't do now because the land's only real value to them seems to be the value it will have to future sprawlers.