Rio Bosque Dry Again

Please sign the Complete Streets Petition.  A complete street “will accommodate all road users, regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation.  Complete streets might include sidewalks, bike lanes, cycle tracks, wide paved shoulders, special bus lanes, comfortable and accessible transit stops, frequent crossing opportunities, median islands, accessible pedestrian signals, or curb extensions.” Get information and sign the petition.  Scroll down the page; there are links to much more information.  Bike Texas has complete streets as part of their legislative agenda which also includes safe passing and a ban on texting while driving.

And while we are on the subject of Bike Texas, be sure to read an article by our own Beth Nobles, Executive Director of Texas Mountain Trail. She writes about a way to earn dollars for a favorite charity through a new iPhone or Android app called Charity Miles.” The program is for walkers, runners and bikers. Beth is also the oomph behind Peak Fitness Challenge along with Don Baumgardt of GeoBetty.  Keeping El Paso naturally means keeping our Trans-Pecos/Southwestern New Mexico region naturally and fit as well. (And charitable.)

For great hikes and events just check out El Paso Hiking Group, GeoBetty, Guadalupe Mountains National Park Meetup Group,  Las Cruces & El Paso Adventurists, Peak Fitness Challenge,  High Desert Hikers and Las Cruces Hiking Meetup.

Sad to report that effluent to the Rio Bosque has stopped.  On top of that, in spite of the water district’s finally allowing the transfer of water rights to the Bosque by private landowners, there are apparently still some hold-ups.  Charlie Wakeem chronicles his attempts to transfer his water rights and I make some comments in a blog post today: When a Water Right Isn’t a Water Right. El Paso Water Improvement District General Manager Chuy Reyes visited Senator Rodriguez’s Environmental Committee and answered their questions yesterday.  I was in attendance.  Here’s the bottom line: The Board of the Water District should give Mr. Reyes a raise. He is discharging his fiduciary responsibility by serving his customers – those small tract owners and large farmers who pay to have their land irrigated.  Given the drought, every drop is dedicated and directed toward paying customers. Thus, the Bosque is not going to get any more water even after a turnout is constructed from the canal into the Bosque.  They may get water in wet years to come – but not now.  Moreover, people with water rights will discover that they won’t be successful giving their water to the Bosque.  If they aren’t going to use it, then the paying customers are first in line.  This means that the only way that the Bosque can be guaranteed a regular supply of water is for the EPWU (which now holds the Bosque in its inventory of land) to deliver the water directly from the Bustamante plant by constructing a nearly half-million dollar pipeline – chump change really.  EPWU dumps water from the plant into the District’s waterway because it is obligated to give so much water back to the District and because it cannot now deal with some of its excess. That excess (if it becomes purple pipe water) can go to the Bosque. The water district will lose it – but then they could have given some of that free water to the Bosque without converting it to purple pipe water.

One more thought. Farmers around here raise some pretty water intensive crops: cotton and pecans come to mind.  Both crops are quite profitable than other crops that require less water.  So for the gain of immediate profit and personal enrichment, some farmers in our area will impoverish future generations of water.  Here’s the thought: perhaps water districts by law should have to go to a tiered system of billing just as the EPWU does with you and me.  If I use a little bit of water, I buy it at a pretty good rate.  If I leap into the next tier of water use, then my rate more than doubles.  Water conservation would be encouraged. Remember the Iroquois maxim:  “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”  This beats the heck out of that slogan that says that “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

I have said just about all that I can say about the ASARCO stacks.  You can read my final (probably, maybe penultimate) blog post for now.

If you want a recreational and educational excursion in the El Paso/Las Cruces area, sign up for one of the Back by Noon events sponsored by the Southwest Environmental Center.  See a Back by Noon poster.

Not just a coffee table book – Cacti of Texas by El Pasoans, Gertrude and Ad Konings, should be in the library of every Chihuahuan Desert recreationalist.

El Paso history comes alive with Melissa Sargent and Jackson Polk every Saturday morning from 10 to Noon on the El Paso History Radio Show on KTSM AM 690 Talk Radio.  Tomorrow morning Melissa and Jackson welcome some Harvey Girls and hear about their role in railroad history. They will also speak with President Dehrkoop and a master mistress re-enactor, Patricia Kiddney, who will portray several of the old West famous women. On February 16 El Paso City Manger Joyce Wilson is on hour one of the show to talk about preservation of downtown buildings.

Do also visit and like on Facebook Old West El Paso Town. Henry Flores writes:  The site “has been created to show and spread the word of the long overdue proposal for the creation of a western town attraction in the heart of our historic city of El Paso, Texas. “Old West El Paso Town” will be built in replica of 1800's downtown South El Paso Street with several historic structures . . . that sadly no longer exist . . . [It] will house small shops, eats and non-stop entertainment.”

Finally and sadly we note the passing of Kathy Goodell, the wife of Dr. Phil Goodell.  Read her obituary.  You will recall that the Goodells recently gave $1 million to UTEP’s College of Science for a center of entrepreneurial geosciences.

Conservation Workshop Tomorrow Morning

The Frontera Land Alliance, the El Paso area’s only non-profit 501 c (3) land trust organization, is hosting a Conservation Workshop beginning tomorrow, Friday, November 2 beginning at 8 a.m. at the downtown El Paso Doubletree Hotel, 600 N. El Paso Street, just south of I-10.  This is a great opportunity for advisors, landowners and anyone else interested in getting up-to-the-minute information on various ways to conserve land. Please join their guest speakers—several attorneys from Braun and Gresham, PLLC and Robertson/Smith Attorneys at Law—to hear all about the many conservation tools that are available.  More information online here and here.

Here are a couple of other events of importance:

City Representative Carl L. Robinson is hosting Ed Drusina, the Commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) at his monthly breakfast meeting tomorrow, Friday, November 2^nd, at the Denny’s Diner at 4690 Transmountain Road at 7:30 a.m.  The IBWC provides “binational solutions to issues that arise during the application of United States - Mexico treaties regarding boundary demarcation, national ownership of waters, sanitation, water quality, and flood control in the border region.” With the issues of drought, water scarcity and looming water “wars”, we should all become very familiar with the key players such as the IBWC and Mr. Drusina.

If you are a dog lover and you are looking for a furry hiking buddy, mark your calendar now for Happy Tails and Happy Trails on Saturday, November 3^rd beginning at 9 a.m. at the Tom Mays Unit. I’ve posted the info for this on my neighborhood association blog. Be sure to click on the image to enlarge and read all of the information. We just have to find Lambert (and his buds) a home. This event is yet another great brain-child of Park Ranger Adrianna Weickhardt. Kudos, Adrianna!  Be sure to see the November schedule of events and hikes sponsored by the Franklin Mountains State Park.

Congratulations to the Borderland Mountain Bike Association for the completion of the Lost Dog Trailhead. I comment about it and the Palisades in a blog post.

Take note that the Sierra Club’s lawsuit against TxDOT over Transmountain has come to an end.

Finally, you read here or in the Times about Professor Phil and Kathy Goodell generously donating  a new Center of Entrepreneurial Geosciences at UTEP, a brainchild of Dr. Goodell.  Read the UTEP News story. It gives some fresh and interesting details.

Please Attend Wednesday's Blue Ribbon Meeting

The next meeting of Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee on Public Service Board (PSB) Land Management will be held on Wednesday, August 22^nd at 8:00 a.m. in the City Council Chambers. The meeting will be open and televised.  El Paso’s water future is the key issue. Do we want the PSB to continue to manage land deliberately as part of an overall water conservation effort or do we want to sell land quickly for development and sprawl?  Judy Ackerman has stated it best: “Please invite others to attend and encourage the termination of the “Blue Ribbon” committee.  The reason that the PSB exists is to remove politics from sales of city owned land.  The purpose of the “Blue-Ribbon” committee is to put politics back in land sales.”

Please visit the elpasonaturally post Update on Sad Blue Committee for more background.  EPWU Public Information Specialist, Martin Bartlett, has provided some strong bullet points for keeping PSB doing what it has been doing since 1952.  See the post, Why the PSB Should Continue to Manage City Land.

Elpasonaturally continues to call for making the preservation of land as natural open space in perpetuity as one of the reasons why land should be declared inexpedient by the PSB and set aside rather than put on the market. (A reasonable condition for declaring property inexpedient is its intrinsic value as open space.)  Here are a few more action items for City Council to take rather than forming a committee to hurry-up land sales:

1.       The City is using too much water for turf parks. ( 20% of this year’s river water!)  We need to limit turf parks by setting a limit on the municipal water supply available for turf parks to a max of 10% of the project river water per year.  Conservation of water requires a transition to natural open space and passive recreation.

2.       The City Council needs to get out of the relationship between the Open Space Advisory Board (OSAB) and PSB regarding spending the 10% of your stormwater fee for open space.  This is really a PSB budget item and City Council needs to stop draining those funds and PSB needs to stand up to Council.  

3.       An OSAB member needs to be allowed to participate in land negotiations conducted by the PSB on open space land purchases.

4.       And again, dissolve the Blue Ribbon Committee and start putting more time and effort into strategic planning (both PSB and the City working together) about our water future in light of global warming, water shortage and drought.

Low flow shower heads and house by house rainwater harvesting make sense and do make a difference locally – but they are just drops in the bucket compared to the overall water issues currently facing us. Marshall Carter-Tripp wrote to say:

“I attended the Rain Harvesting session today. [TecH20 workshop this past Saturday.]  Reasonably informative.   But I kept thinking that this is in the category of the deck chairs on the Titanic.  If we save and use some rainwater, fine, we can reduce our reliance on city water.   We personally don't have the storage capacity to live off the grid as it were.   And of course, as rainfall totals drop, where are we going?  If every new house in EP had to have harvesting capacity installed, even if we retrofitted every house in EP, would that help?  At 4500 gallons a year total from a roof, seems unlikely to keep the problem under control, especially if we continue the headlong expansion of the city. Low-flow toilets, efficient washers, Yada Yada.   Helpful but . . .

“That big gorilla over there in the corner is our totally wasteful and totally unsustainable agriculture, which cannot be fed by rainwater harvesting.  (Nor can all those new swimming pools going in around the City.) What we are doing now is promoting minor actions that make a small number of people feel that something important is being done while we ignore that gorilla and his twin, "how many people can live in the Paso del Norte region?  Have we already reached that number?  What happens in 2042?”

It is time to look more critically at our choices of water hungry crops, irrigation canals subject to evaporation, and a water district out of our control – and more out of our control since the number of people who can vote in Water Improvement District #1 was cut dramatically through legislation by State Senator José Rodriguez. WID Manager, Jesus “Chuy” Reyes, won’t answer questions about voting rights denied.

There are those who are more optimistic about El Paso’s water future. Dr. Phil Goodell, THE Dean of Geology and a hero of mine, believes El Paso with its desalinization plant and prospects for importing water will have water for “hundreds” of years even if that water is much more expensive. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the most pessimistic assumptions and centuries of time. Do read, Dr. Goodell’s email to me posted here. Whatever the case, for sure his optimism is yet another reason to let PSB continue to manage land and water conservation. Manage with more transparency for sure. Manage as part of a comprehensive El Paso strategy for its water future, definitely. And manage with more environmental/conservation experts on the Board and less tied to development and industry and less whose institutions benefit from PSB/EPWU largesse.

Finally, if you don’t believe that global warming, long-term drought and water shortage are issues, just turn on the news. A reader just pointed out that last winter the north rim of the Grand Canyon received eight inches of snow when the average is 142 inches! Here’s a quick read about drought impact including links to more information. Cut to the chase? Just go to the Drought Mitigation Center.

Geologist Disputes El Paso Water Shortage Claims

Dr. Phil Goodell is a giant and a legend. He's one of my heroes. He's an El Paso treasure. Nineteen years ago he began Celebration of Our Mountains because he wanted to take lay people on the same kinds of geology field trips that he took his students.  Yesterday he took me to different sites in El Paso that had been contaminated  by nasty things such as benzene, diesel fuel, leaded gasoline and more. He's thinking about putting together an "environmental" tour for this year's Celebration of Our Mountains. He recently emailed me because he disagreed with the prospect that El Paso was running out of water. He is far more optimistic than many and points to the desalinization plant as the main reason for his optimism. 

Here is what he wrote:

"I was born and raised in El Paso and graduated from El Paso High in 1960.  Drought and water scarcity were constant issues.  Water rationing was periodic; and when our student club wanted to raise funds by a ‘car washing event’,  we had to get special permission.

"I returned to EP in 1975 as a geologist/geochemist, and have taught at UTEP ever since.  I taught 7 years simultaneously in Juarez at UACJ.  My interests and professional activities have naturally expanded to include many environmental issues in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez, and students have received their degrees studying relevant topics and we have published scientific articles on some topics.  This has drawn me into regulatory and scientific data about the area.   The world forgets that the ‘low level nuclear waste environmental saga’ which took place here lasted over a decade.  Prof Dave Lemone, County Judge Luther Jones, and others participated in Phase 1 at Fort Hancock.

"Bill Addington and many others (including myself) participated in Phase 2 at Sierra Blanca, and we won. (Some from our group slept on the top of the Cordova Bridge and fasted for 30 days).  And then came ASARCO.  Whew!!  A history better remembered but we won that too.

"I don’t get involved in environmental issues as much, but some of the statements in your letter disturbed me, about water in El Paso.  When I was a kid, El Paso always only had 20 years supply left.  That was 1960.  When I returned to El Paso in 1975, El Paso had a 20 years supply of water left.   In the 1980s the PSB spent $10M, mainly in legal fees, challenging 'The Law of the West' that groundwater cannot be transported across state lines.  Through the 1990s El Paso always had a 20 year water supply left.  Look at the reports.  And then things begin to change.  The PSB went out and purchased ranches with water rights north and south of Van Horn, Texas, with the idea of future pipelines.  And then the 2000s came along, and, a near miracle:  the desal plant (desalinization).  The military would not have expanded Ft. Bliss is that had not happened.  Largest inland such plant in the world.    An incredible effect on El Paso’s resources.  You now read 30 years and 50 years for the future  water supply.  Actually, it is 100s of years. (Just don’t tell people, because they want to think otherwise.)  So, I do not believe El Paso is running out of water, and I think this is a false fear.  Import water?  PSB owns the ranches; you cannot import water from New Mexico or Mexico.  Under the El Paso airport, there is 9,000 feet (vertical) of salty water, and that extends to the NM state line.  So you calculate how many cubic miles of water that is that we have to send through a desal plant.  That’s why I say we have 100s of years supply.  However, we still must conserve water."

When Dr. Goodell speaks, I listen. We discussed this "difference" of ours briefly yesterday just before we said "goodbye". I'm not sure that we disagree on the quantity of the water but on the quality and maybe on the rate of recharge. With global warming and drought, the recharge of the Mesilla Bolson by the river will certainly decline. The interplay between desal and the Hueco Bolson is unclear. Salt contamination of wells near the airport occurred due to over-pumping the bolson thus the the desal wells are located to intercept brackish water from potable. As a friend of mine who eats, sleeps and drinks this stuff says: "If you can over-pump the bolson and draw salt, then you can over-pump the salt and draw potable."

All of this is as clear as mud to me. I gathered that Dr. Goodell doesn't dispute the quality of water but clearly he believes that the desal plant will make all of the water in the Hueco Bolson available to us for hundreds of years and not 20, 30 or 50. That and importation give him hope. I'm not confident that we will because of politics import water. He and I do agree that  desalinating the water and importing water will ultimately mean more expensive water. We both agree that "we still must conserve water."