How Much Water?

If you are able, there are 3 big reasons to attend tomorrow’s Public Service Board Meeting at the El Paso Water Utilities Building 1154 Hawkins Blvd. (Map) at 9 a.m. :

First there is Item 13 on the agenda.  Dr. Bill Hutchison will give a presentation on the El Paso Municipal Water Supply: Availability, Development and Management. Read the attachment to the agenda regarding his bio and background with the water utility and his expertise. (BTW, if you use Chrome as your web browser, you will not be able to open any EPWU attachment. You will have to switch to Internet Explorer. I do not know how well other browsers work with the site. EPWU staff does not seem willing to make their site more user friendly to all El Pasoans.) In May 2006, Dr. Hutchison published his doctoral dissertation written at UTEP under the guidance of Dr. John Walton. I understand that Dr. Walton will be in attendance at tomorrow’s PSB meeting.  CEO Archuleta has asked Hutchison to give an overview of regional water resources, groundwater modeling and interpretation, discuss the Far West Texas Water Plan, water districts and their authority, regional modeling and plans for our future.

The issues really are how much water do we have and how much can we count on in the future especially in the context of continuing drought, population growth, continuing sprawl and the impact of global warming and climate change. A good resource to understand the impact of climate change on El Paso is a presentation given by NOAA and National Weather Service meteorologist and forecaster, David Novlan, gave to the Trans-Pecos Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists last Thursday evening. You can view the slide show that accompanied his talk. Although you don’t have the advantage of his talk, you can learn much by carefully studying each frame.

Part of the EPWU strategy is to begin importation of water from areas east of El Paso in the near future. Because of water shortages all over the state, region, nation and world, pushback from local authorities is going to make importation harder not easier. At the last Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee, Ted Houghton made exactly that point. One hopes that he will be heard out about the matter. Witness the politics in Milam County, Texas.  The authority of water districts will trump water use plans. Witness the problem in Odessa, Texas.  Lawsuits to allow New Mexico farmers the right to pump  groundwater near the Rio Grande which will drain what comes to El Paso and the rest of Texas are making their way through the courts.  For its part, New Mexico is struggling with many of the same issues and water wars are shaping up over the Colorado River water. And, let’s not forget Chihuahua.

Bottom line: Dr. Hutchison is a must hear. Let’s hope that he talks straight and does not try to bend things for the EPWU official line. Water is scarce. That scarcity is growing. We need to speak openly and honestly.

Next on the agenda is Item 14, a presentation on the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park by John Sproul. The Bosque is a prime example of things just not making sense – a sign of back room deals and water arithmetic just not checking out.  Effluent is treated at the EPWU’s Bustamante plant.  About 7,800 acre feet of treated effluent water per year which could go to the Bosque gets dumped back into a drain controlled by the Water District and never makes it to the Bosque. (Once in a drain or canal of the Water District, the water belongs to the District.) Although the EPWU purchases river water from the Water District, this treated effluent (which is not river water of course) goes to the district as a freebie. And that’s just the start. The 7800 acre feet is what could go the Bosque.  The average output from Bustamante Waste Water Treatment Plant averages 28 MGD (Million Gallons per Day).  Purple pipe water goes for $.96 per Ccf (a Ccf is 100 cubic feet, or 748 gallons).  (28,000,000 MGD/748 Gal) X $.96 = $35,935/day.  That’s quite a windfall that the Water District gets for free! Why?

Also to divert water from the Bustamante directly to the Bosque requires a modification of a permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). (To see the permit go to the Central Registry Query.  Type in Bustamante for Regulated Entity and select wastewater for the program.  Leave all other fields blank.  When the Bustamante WWTP's information comes up on the screen, scroll down to the link for permit number WQ0010408010.  This link will take you to a page from which View Permit allows you to download the permit.) Changing a permit may allow the TCEQ to add more requirements and the EPWU in the past has expressed that they don’t want the hassle.  Or is it a hassle? Many believe that simple political persuasion will make a change of the permit easy. So, why can’t the Bosque get water and why is there seemingly no effort to get water to them from the Bustamante and, instead, to dump water back into canals and drains controlled by the Water District as a free gift to the District?

Which brings us to the third  big reason to attend the PSB meeting tomorrow. Item 15 is a presentation by Malcolm Pirnie/Arcadis on the feasibility of providing reclaimed water to Rio Bosque and on the potential for a potable reuse project using effluent from the Roberto R. Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Rio Bosque Wetlands. See the Malcolm Pirnie/Arcadis presentation to OSAB in August. This presentation goes hand in hand with Item 14 and it and Item 14 are part of that place where the rubber hits the road when it comes to Item 13.

Tomorrow is a PSB not to miss.

Finally, another don’t miss meeting is next Monday’s (September 17) meeting of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee at 8 a.m. in the City Council chambers. The question was whether that Committee would do all that it was created to do. Read the blog post. It seemed that, now that the PSB control of land management is in the bag, other issues about water management, open space and a water use budget might be dropped. Again, TxDOT’s Ted Houghton was raising some powerful questions about water districts and water importation at the last meeting. Are we now going to just drop them? The Mayor’s new agenda may be giving more leeway for completing the Blue Ribbon’s tasks.