Rio Bosque News Is Better than Imagined

I had the opportunity to speak in person with Mr. John Balliew, the CEO of the El Paso Water Utilities this morning. The topic of conversation was the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park. Our visit followed my Monday blog post More Good News for the Rio Bosque. The post raised some anxieties among members of the conservation community. 

To help visualize what I'm going to say, take a look at the map below. You will definitely want to enlarge it (maybe in a different tab) and refer back to it:

Rio Bosque Wetlands Aerial Map 

The map shows the relationship among the Bustamante Treatment Plant on the right, the Rio Bosque in the center and the Socorro Ponds/Reservoir on the left. The Socorro Reservoir is the project that Mr. Chuy Reyes and his engineer both from the El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 proposed to the PSB this past Wednesday. They have worked out an arrangement with the EPWU for ponding areas to reserve water for El Paso County farmers. Currently, stormwater moves down the river past our County and to the Hudspeth County reservoirs. Because of the arrangement, the WID#1 will be able to capture that water for our farmers and owe water back to the EPWU. (The EPWU owns the land where the ponds will be.) The water owed back to the EPWU will be used to help irrigate the Rio Bosque.

The red line on the bottom of the map indicates where a pipeline will go from the Bustamante to the Socorro Ponds. It is the extension of that pipeline that has delayed going to bid since the pipeline will also be part of the relationship among the ponds, the Bosque and the Bustamante.

Bottom line: the Rio Bosque will have 3 sources not just 2 for water: directly from the Bustamante, from the turnout at the Riverside Canal as it currently gets from the WID#1, and now water from the ponds owed to EPWU by the WID#1.

One big concern that some had as the result of Monday's post was the TCEQ authorization. The new authorization (now being finalized) mentions nothing about "effluent" only Type I and Type II reclaimed water. Balliew explained that "effluent" often is Type II reclaimed water as its turbidity and bacterial counts are low enough to be re-categorized. In other words, what may be called effluent, is most often Type II water that the TCEQ will permit to go to the Bosque. Note again that the new authorization allows for water from the Bustamante to be used for the irrigation of "constructed wetlands".

But the news just gets better. The EPWU has already begun working with the Army Corps of Engineers to produce a wetland park at the Rio Bosque much like the Rio Grande Valley State Park in Albuquerque. (You can still see online an initial presentation of this Corps of Engineers project from 2010 complete with a virtual tour.) Add to this vision of the Bosque another one: the EPWU is acquiring other drains so that one day you may indeed enjoy walking along a parkway from Ascarate to the Bosque.

A final P.S. about an EPWU project I get super-excited about: Our utility has become quite successful conserving water; and let us hope that they conserve much more and that the City will indeed move toward some enlightened rainwater strategies that will help even more and perhaps to codifying truly water savings building practices.  A downside of that success though is the fact that they are selling less of their product thus making staying in business, so to speak, more difficult. Mr. Balliew has proposed new products: producing phosphorous and nitrogen for commercial use. Currently EP farmers purchase millions of dollars of fertilizer. Also currently, most of the nitrogen and phosphorous available from water treatment is lost. Capture it. Sell it. Voilá! New products. Balliew and company are working on it. Now, if only the TCEQ (and EPA) would allow the use of the effluent "cake", rather than being forced to bury that product that also contains needed soil micronutrients, local growing industries could benefit. I say this as one who has asked for years now why we don't sell Zoo Doo as they do in Seattle for example.

Again, the news at and for the Rio Bosque just gets better and better.