EPWU Now Says It Will Remediate at Detention Pond

As I reported the other day in a post, EPWU Vice President John Balliew told me via email that EPWU did not plan on re-vegetating the detention pond dam. However, according to Balliew, after reading my blog post, visiting the site and discussing the matter with Christina Montoya and Jose Luis (a storm water engineer), they decided that they should re-vegetate.

Their decision was probably really the result of a KTSM news story done by Matt Rivers who had called them for an interview earlier in the day. Suddenly re-seeding looked like good public relations. (It also means good land management and environmental care - but whatever motivates it is fine with me.) Matt interviewed me in the story which was aired three times on Thursday.

Balliew asked me for suggestions. I first pointed out that EPWU had done some re-seeding at Resler Canyon using a mixture of native seeds devised by Scott Cutler, the manager of Resler and the President of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition. (The need to re-seed an area at Resler was the result of damage to the canyon done by EPWU. After first telling Frontera Land Alliance they would remediate, they then reneged and went into protracted communications with Frontera officers. Eventually Frontera got its lawyer involved and eventually he threatened a lawsuit. Finally, Ed Archuleta and company decided to do the right thing and fix what they broke . . . but not until delaying for as long as they could. Delay seems to be the tactic of the EPWU legal department. In this case it was a further revelation of how much they truly value natural beauty, conservation and open space.)

I also proposed that he should contact Texas AgriLife Extension Service Program Specialist, Alyson McDonald, with the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. She is a seed and erosion control expert. We will see whether he does.

EPWU has two erosion control methods of choice: spraying "pavcryl"l (or similar) or hydromulching.

The simple fact is this: they had plans to clean out the pond, but they had no plans to remediate or do erosion control. Kevin von Finger tells me that, when the City managed the dam in back of Keystone. The City scraped away vegetation and now there are deep gullies eroding into the side. Vegetation had kept erosion at bay. Plants such as desert perennials, cacti and lechugilla do not compromise a dam but hold the top soil. When rain hits exposed top soil it will once again clog the drain in the detention pond. Had EPWU had a plan to remediate (as I guess they are formulating now), then future sediment would be reduced and less money would be spent.

Besides, imagine, opening the path as it now exists on three sides of the detention pond to hikers and mountain bikers going around Scenic Drive. It would add another dimension to that beautiful walk. Keeping the plant life (and animal habitats) would only enhance the beauty of this area and its value to the neighborhoods below and to the eco-tourist market for the City. Unfortunately, up to now, EPWU has one-dimensional thinking that does not include preserving natural beauty or creating recreational opportunities.

They should take a lesson from Harris County Flood Control District that plans for preserving natural beauty in the first place. What it will take in El Paso is for EPWU to develop good management policies that include not just the care of infrastructure, but a sense of environmental care and rain water harvesting, which if there was more of down stream, big, ugly pits wouldn't be as necessary.