The Johnson Basin Scam

PSB took nearly $400,000 of your money set aside to purchase valuable, natural open space to buy 4 acres of vacant land along with a few houses in the lower Dyer area of the City. Johnson Basin is situated near Assumption Church and school and west of Travis Elementary. It abuts William Beaumont military land on the west. It is roughly between Pierce and Lincoln Avenues on the south and north and Copia and Justus on the east and west.  Here is a picture of the area from a URS study:

Click on picture to enlarge.

Between the Johnson Basin and William Beaumont is a tall rock wall with barbed wire in some places and an iron grate where an almost 2 block fragment of what once was an arroyo flows onto the basin, narrowing to a mere ditch, bending to the north where it abruptly dead ends without a culvert at Lincoln Avenue.

The purchase of the Johnson Basin was never approved by the Open Space Advisory Board. It suddenly appeared last month in a handout "Open Space and Park/Ponds" along with its acquisition price of $394,247. OSAB never vetted it in contradiction to Mr. Ed Archuleta's claim to the PSB at their meeting this past Wednesday. More egregiously, it seems now that PSB never vetted or approved any of the purchases making up the Johnson Basin. Nevertheless, PSB members let is slide in spite of the fact that Mr. Archuleta dismissively confessed that he may not have brought the purchase or purchases before the Board. (Purchases over $25,000 must be brought to the PSB. Elpasonaturally has an Open Records Request for documents that show the agenda and minutes of meetings when the purchases were discussed and approved.)

At the last PSB meeting, member Richard Schoephoerster pontificated that the Basin was a "perfect example of natural open space." Really, Dick? Let's take a look at it shall we.

Click the above to enlarge. The questions were asked by the person who got this Google map. I can best answer the questions by simply describing what happens from the Basin to the mountain. A tall rock wall divides the basin from William Beaumont, the military medical campus that owns the property along Pierce Avenue  to above Louisiana. An iron grate divides the ditch in the Basin from the wider arroyo on William Beaumont property. That "arroyo" ends less than 2 blocks west where the old Piedras entrance to the hospital exists. West of Piedras is a retention pond which sits below parking lots on the north and to the west. Run-off from these lots feed into the retention pond. There is no connectivity between that pond and the arroyo fragment to the east. There is no connectivity between that retention pond and any natural feature to the west. A spillover is constructed at the east end of the pond and there is one across Piedras at the beginning of the arroyo fragment. It would take quite a rain event to spill any water over from one side to the other. In essence, there just isn't any connectivity. Beyond the retention pond to the west toward the mountain is the paved parking lot of Beaumont, a residential area, a commercial area, the cement and asphalt of the Alabama Street corridor and then Cemex. Where the mouth of McKelligon Canyon once cut down through this area there is only a large culvert that crosses under Alabama and comes out across the street from someone's garage door. Looking at that door and house one can see the Beaumont campus to the east. 

You can see pictures of all of this including the Johnson Basin by going here.

Certainly Johnson Basin probably is the site of some flooding during rains. Johnson Street runs down toward Dyer. A ditch with culverts pass under Travis Elementary and then to the Pershing Dam. Streets in this neighborhood were often designed to be the stormwater passageways. Haphazard development meant that drainage and neighborhoods didn't always fit together. Nevertheless, the money to fix the Johnson Basin should have come from some other place than money to buy natural open space as well. 

The mere 2 block arroyo fragment along the south side of William Beaumont has no connectivity, is cut-off in fact from non-military El Pasoans, is not ecologically sensitive, has no aesthetic value, and is, in fact,  a trash dump and trash collector. Since Mr. Schoephoerster calls it a "perfect example of natural open space", let's name it for him: the Schoephoerster Trash Preserve.

Question: will PSB do the right thing and give the money back to Open Space and take it out of some other part of their budget? Keep in mind that Open Space money is a cash account. After Parks and Recreation made-off with nearly $3,000,000 of it and Ed and Company took $400,000 for their Johnson Basin Scam, there may be less than $600,000 in that account today. Should the opportunity arise to buy a special piece of natural open space property, the money won't be there until slowly replenished by the 10% of your stormwater fee - replenished unless dipped into again with no regard to the process, of course.

More to report on all of this for sure as well as the Park/Ponds boondoggle.