[Senate Hearing 107-271]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-271
NEW MEXICO WATER SUPPLY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
TO IDENTIFY ISSUES RELATED TO THE WATER SUPPLY CHALLENGES FACING THE
SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO BORDER REGION, A REGION INCLUDING THE EL PASO,
TEXAS AND JUAREZ, MEXICO AREAS
__________
AUGUST 14, 2001
LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
_______
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77-468 WASHINGTON : 2002
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico, Chairman
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii FRANK H. MURKOWSKI, Alaska
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
BOB GRAHAM, Florida DON NICKLES, Oklahoma
RON WYDEN, Oregon LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming
EVAN BAYH, Indiana RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California CONRAD BURNS, Montana
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York JON KYL, Arizona
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GORDON SMITH, Oregon
Robert M. Simon, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Brian P. Malnak, Republican Staff Director
James P. Beirne, Republican Chief Counsel
Mike Connor, Counsel
Shelley Brown, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
Page
Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico................ 1
Burkstaller, John, P.E., Chief Technical Officer, El Paso Water
Utilities Public Service Board................................. 20
Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico............. 2
Esslinger, Gary, Treasurer/Manager, Elephant Butte Irrigation
District....................................................... 25
Fifer, Edd, General Manager, El Paso County Water Improvement
District #1.................................................... 28
Gold, Rick L., Regional Director, Upper Colorado Region, Bureau
of Reclamation................................................. 48
Little, Debra J., Principal Engineer, Engineering Department,
United States Section of the International Boundary and Water
Commission..................................................... 53
Peach, James, Professor, Department of Economics, New Mexico
State University............................................... 10
Rascon, Antonio, Principal Engineer, Mexican Section of the
International Boundary and Water Commission.................... 57
Smith, Ruben A., Mayor, City of Las Cruces, NM................... 16
Turney, Tom, State Engineer, State of New Mexico................. 40
Wood, M. Karl, Director, New Mexico Water Resources Research
Institute...................................................... 4
NEW MEXICO WATER SUPPLY
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TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Las Cruces, NM.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:07 a.m. in the
Corbett Center Auditorium, New Mexico State University, Las
Cruces, New Mexico, Hon. Jeff Bingaman, chairman, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO
The Chairman. Let us get started. If anyone wants to hear
the testimony, please come sit down where you can hear it. We
have lots of room in the front row.
Let me thank you all for being here. This is a hearing of
the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to provide a
forum for identifying issues and learning more about the
various water supply challenges facing southern New Mexico's
border region, including, of course, El Paso and the Juarez
metropolitan areas.
Before we begin, let me just recognize some of the
congressional staff who are here. First, Mary Catherine Zee and
Don Manzanares, both from Senator Domenici's staff. We
appreciate them being here very much. We understand that
Representative Reyes, Congressman Reyes may have a
representative here later on, and if so, we will certainly
recognize him.
From the energy committee staff, Mike Connor, who is
sitting beside me here, and Shelley Brown have come out to help
organize this hearing. We appreciate that very much.
There has been an increasing amount of attention and
scrutiny on water issues in the border region. Initially that
attention was focused on the need to increase the environmental
infrastructure in the area, particularly the wastewater
treatment plants. Although more needs to be done in that area,
progress is being made on these issues through the Border 21
Program, the ongoing partnerships between the United States and
Mexico. Fernando Macias was here a few minutes ago, he is back
towards the back, and we appreciate his good work on many of
those issues.
The focus of today's hearing, however, concerns a separate
and ongoing challenge facing the region, that is the issue of
water supply. While the need to secure an adequate supply of
fresh water is nothing new in the arid West, there are some
unique aspects here which warrant special consideration. First,
addressing water supply issues among several different
governmental entities is a very real challenge. We have two
nations, and that complicates the issue even further.
Second, the region is experiencing growth at a rate
significantly exceeding that of most other areas. The growth
not only increases the demand for water, but also changes how
and when the available water supply is used.
The goal of this hearing is to learn more about the current
projections of available water supply, any plans to address
increased and changing demands, and issues which need to be
resolved as part of that process.
We have a distinguished group of witnesses here today who
can give us their perspective on this subject from several
different viewpoints. At the end of the day I hope we can have
a better understanding of the challenges facing the region and
the role that the Federal Government can play in helping meet
those challenges.
We are going to start with Mr. Karl Wood, who is the
director of the Water Resources Research Institute here at New
Mexico State University, and following him, Professor James
Peach, who is at the Department of Economics here at New Mexico
State. We will hear from both of them, and then we may have an
additional witness on this panel, and I will have questions of
both of you.
But Karl, will you start and take 10 or 15 minutes,
whatever you think is appropriate, to tell us your perspective.
[A prepared statement from Senator Domenici follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Pete V. Domenici, U.S. Senator
From New Mexico
I want to thank all of you for attending today's hearing on water
supply challenges facing the southern New Mexico border region. Of
course, those of us from this area know what the problem is--increasing
demands on a limited water supply. Of the issues facing New Mexico in
the next decade, the greatest challenges will be water-related, in
terms of both quantity and quality.
I have often reminded my colleagues in the Senate not to be fooled
by the name ``Rio Grande''--our great river is no Potomac. We all know
that securing enough clean water for our needs is crucial for the
future of New Mexico. As demand grows more intense between urban areas,
industry, agriculture and others, we must work together to balance all
interests.
Many of you may know that I have been very involved for years in
working to improve the water situation in New Mexico. I am pleased to
continue funding work to sustain the endangered Rio Grande silvery
minnow, as well as provide enough water for human uses, through my
position on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.
The Energy and Water bill funds the Department of Energy, the Bureau of
Reclamation, and the Corps of Engineers--all crucial agencies to water
in our state, through research, development and delivery. I have helped
fund activities supporting endangered species, as well as water
development for agricultural and municipal users throughout the state.
Specific to the border area, colonias, the North American
Development Bank (NADBank), Border Environmental Cooperation Commission
(BECC) and the proposed El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water
Project have all received funding over the years; however, permanent
solutions to supply and demand issues are needed. The rest of the
country is realizing what we have known for decades, namely that water
has become the new liquid gold. Just this past Sunday, the New York
Times published an article stating that water supply concerns threaten
the entire country, not just the arid west. The Times predicts that El
Paso and Albuquerque could ``go dry'' in 10 to 20 years. The recent
emergencies in the Klamath Falls area of Oregon, which has pit
agricultural water needs against those of endangered species, is
hopefully not a precursor for a similar crisis here in New Mexico.
We know that Las Cruces, Santa Teresa, Sunland Park and smaller
communities in southern New Mexico need water to grow. The El Paso
region and growing areas around Juarez have the same needs. We must
find ways to ensure that people, endangered species, and agricultural
land can strike a balance on water needs. These challenges, along with
water quality concerns, will define the next few years of effort along
our water systems. We must also realize that the problems we face here
in New Mexico are not unique.
The greatest water quality issue facing New Mexico today is the
lowering of the arsenic drinking water standard. The compliance cost
estimates associated with these new standards are staggering. I do
believe that if the federal government is going to place this kind of
cost on Americans, then it must also be willing to help foot the bill.
Otherwise, we shouldn't be too surprised to see systems serving small,
rural and largely low-income communities being shut down.
If you have not already read it in the newspapers, the House
recently passed language prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to
delay the 10 parts per billion arsenic standard published in the waning
hours of the Clinton administration. Additionally, the language
prohibits using FY 02 funds to increase the standard. The Senate passed
language stating that the EPA administrator must immediately put a new
standard into effect that should protect the population in general,
while fully taking into account those at greater risk such as infants,
children, the elderly and pregnant women.
The Senate language is more flexible and is not an outright
prohibition on review or standard level. I am pleased that the Senate
language, unlike the House, is not a strict prohibition and does not
mandate the Clinton standard be immediately put into effect. I am not
against a new standard, but want one that is based on sound science.
Based on the work being conducted by our National Laboratories, we
feel more confident in affordable technologies that may soon be
available to treat water. Additionally, on August 1, I introduced a
bill authorizing $1.9 billion for a grant program to help local
communities pay for the cost of improving water treatment facilities to
meet potentially stricter federal quality standards. Communities would
apply directly to EPA for grants. Grants would be awarded based on
financial need and per capita cost of complying with drinking water
standards.
Our water issues will only continue to grow more challenging. We
must be innovative thinkers and visionaries in the water world. We
cannot delay facing these issues now. One way is to chart a broad new
course aimed at channeling scientific innovation to ensure plentiful
future water supplies through the desalination of brackish and sea
water.
One major thrust of a bill I introduced this month, the Water
Supply Security Act of 2001, authorizes the construction of a
desalination test and evaluation facility over the Tularosa Basin in
Otero County, New Mexico to improve existing technologies and develop
new technologies to reduce costs. Although communities throughout the
nation and the world have depleting stores of fresh water, they all
have large deposits of brackish and sea water. Because brackish and sea
water account for over 97 percent of the water on Earth, being able to
cheaply convert this water into fresh water will play a key role in
ensuring an adequate water supply in the future.
The bill would direct the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department
of Energy to collaborate on evaluating current technology, advising on
additional research, and building a facility to test and prepare
desalination technologies for ``real-world applications.'' In addition,
this basin has the highest level of solar radiation in the world, which
will allow us to evaluate a combination of renewable energy and
desalination applications, an important area of future research.
Although desalting technology has become significantly cheaper in
recent years, the cost of desalting brackish and sea water is still
substantially more expensive than treatment and delivery of other
municipal water supplies.
The proposed desalination facility would be located near several
research and development organizations including White Sands Missile
Range, Fort Bliss, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico State
University, and the University of Texas at El Paso. Evaluation of
technologies in the Tularosa Basin would have direct applications to
cities in southern New Mexico, West Texas, and northern Mexico, as well
as inland applications throughout the United States. Revolutionary
desalting technologies would provide significant relief to communities
throughout the world, be they rich or poor, coastal or inland.
We are all neighbors; the city-dweller, the farmer, the fish, the
American and the Mexican. Water sustains us all. For our future, we
cannot wait to solve the crucial problem of finding enough water for
all. ``Agua es la vida de nuestra tierra.''
STATEMENT OF M. KARL WOOD, DIRECTOR, NEW MEXICO WATER RESOURCES
RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Mr. Wood. Thank you, Senator Bingaman. I wish to welcome
you back to New Mexico, and especially welcome you to New
Mexico State University, what we like to describe as the
university of choice.
Today, I wish to talk briefly about the water resources in
the border region. The binational border region, of which
southern New Mexico is part, is generally defined as an area
which extends from east of El Paso to west of Juarez, and
extending north into New Mexico approximately 60 miles.
The water resources of this area consist of both surface
and groundwater. The surface waters relate generally to the Rio
Grande. Numerous other small streams, creeks, arroyos, and
draws are typical of the arid southwest. The groundwater
resources of the region consist of a number of alluvial and
basin-fill aquifers. These groundwater aquifers include the
Tularosa/Hueco, the Jornada del Muerto, and the Mesilla
Bolsons.
The climate of the region is typical of that of the arid
Southwest with mostly clear skies, abundant sunshine, limited
rainfall, and limited humidity. Average annual precipitation of
most of the area is less than 10 inches per year. In the last
100 years in Las Cruces, as an example, it has been about 8\1/
2\ inches. The last 40 years in Las Cruces have been 9\1/2\
inches.
The Hueco/Tularosa aquifer extends from the north of
Alamogordo south beyond El Paso and Juarez. Most of the water
is found in the ground. Total surface area of the Hueco/
Tularosa aquifer is 4,160 square miles, approximately 67
percent of it being in New Mexico, 22 percent in Texas, and 11
percent in Mexico. The aquifer is a primary source of water for
the city of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and for military
installations and smaller cities and towns in New Mexico,
Texas, and Mexico.
Well yields in this aquifer vary greatly with yields
between 1,800 gallons per minute to as low as 15 gallons per
minute. Depth to the groundwater in the north is between 20 and
150 feet. Drawdowns in many municipal wells up to 100 feet have
been recorded in this area.
Groundwater is at or near the surface near the White Sands
National Monument. Current depth to groundwater beneath the
city of El Paso is usually between 250 and 400 feet. That
distance is away from the river.
Present depth to groundwater beneath Ciudad Juarez varies
from about 100 to 250 feet, except near the Rio Grande where
depths are less than 70 feet.
A bit on the water quality in this basin. The groundwater
north of New Mexico/Texas State line is usually greater than
100 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids, except
around the mountains. The water along the interior of the basin
has TDS greater than 10,000 milligrams per liter. 10,000
milligrams is quite salty. It is generally considered to be
toxic even to most livestock.
Groundwaters along the Franklin Mountains are
characteristically less than 700 milligrams per liter. Away
from the recharge areas along the Franklin Mountains, water
salinity increases to over 1,000 milligrams per liter in many
wells, reaching concentrations of over 1,500 in wells along the
center of the basin. The salinity of groundwater underlying the
Ciudad Juarez area is generally less than 1,000 milligrams.
Chloride and other dissolved ions have increased over time
in many of the municipal wells in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.
Nitrate data collected between 1994 and 1995 indicate nitrate
problems in some parts of El Paso County. In the Ciudad Juarez
area, sampling in 1987 suggested that groundwater beneath
Ciudad Juarez was contaminated by sewage.
The Hueco Bolson has served for many decades as the
principal source of water for the city of El Paso and Ciudad
Juarez, as well as communities in Dona Ana and Otero Counties
of New Mexico. The city of El Paso has actively pursued
development of alternative supplies, rigorous conservation
programs and recharge programs to prolong the life of the
aquifer.
In New Mexico, the community of Chaparral and small
acreages of irrigated cropland in the area are principal uses
of the Hueco basin water. In the Tularosa subbasin, a number of
municipal systems, the White Sands Missile Range, as well as
self-supplied uses depend on the resource for domestic
supplies.
Now, to talk a minute about the Jornada del Muerto Bolson.
It lies east of the Mesilla Bolson on what is
characteristically called the east mesa. The basin covers
approximately 3,344 square miles and is approximately 12 miles
across at the widest section. The depth to the water table here
is between 300 and 575 feet.
In the southern part of the basin, estimated volume of
water in storage is over 100 million acre-feet. Groundwater in
the southern section of the Jornada del Muerto Bolson is
classified as fresh and water in the northern section is
classified as slightly saline. Water use in this basin is
limited to public, self-supplied domestic, industrial,
commercial, and livestock uses. Currently no agriculture
activities are present, but there have been limited acreages in
the past.
The Mesilla Basin aquifer system consists of floodplain
alluvium and the underlying Mesilla Bolson. It extends from
southern New Mexico to West Texas and northern Mexico along the
Rio Grande. The Rio Grande originates in northern New Mexico
and southern Colorado Rocky Mountains, flows through New
Mexico, and forms the boundary between Texas and Mexico on its
way to the Gulf of Mexico. It is the dominant and limiting
surface water resource throughout most of its watershed.
The surface drainage of the Mesilla Basin covers
approximately 1,100 square miles. Historically, Rio Grande
flows have been highly variable both between years and between
seasons. Average annual flow above Elephant Butte Reservoir was
569,000 acre-feet from 1895 to 1969, with a standard deviation
of nearly 400,000 acre-feet.
With this high a flow and this high a standard deviation,
it is obvious to see that the variation is tremendous. This has
led to floods and extended periods of no flow. These flows were
stabilized by the Rio Grande Project, so that there is
generally a consistent flow every year.
The Rio Grande floodplain between Leasburg Dam and the El
Paso narrows is not a confined aquifer. The water table is
approximately 10 to 25 feet below the land surface. Recharging
to the aquifer occurs primarily as vertical flow from the
surface water system. These include the river, canals,
laterals, and drains and irrigated cropland fields. The quality
of the water generally reflects the quality of the surface
water system, ranging from about 500 to over 1,000 milligrams
per liter of TDS.
In conclusion, the flows of the Rio Grande are stored in
Elephant Butte and Caballo Reservoirs. Elephant Butte Reservoir
has a capacity of just over 2 million acre-feet. The capacity
of Caballo is about 330,000 acre-feet. Ground and surface water
is used below Caballo Reservoir by individual homes,
municipalities, industry, and agriculture.
In 1906, a treaty was negotiated with Mexico for the
delivery of 60,000 acre-feet of water annually at the Acequia
Madre ditch that headed below the principal diversion in El
Paso. The authorized acreage to be irrigated is 90,640 acres in
New Mexico and 69,010 in Texas.
That describes the water resources of the region. It seems
like there is a lot of water, but there is a lot of uses, also.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wood follows:]
Prepared Statement of M. Karl Wood, Director, and Dr. Bobby J. Creel,
Associate Director, New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute
INTRODUCTION
The bi-national border region of New Mexico is generally defined as
an area which extends from east of El Paso to west of Juarez, Mexico
and extending north into New Mexico approximately 100 km (60 miles). It
includes portions of Otero and Dona Ana counties. The water resources
of this area consist of both surface and groundwater.
The surface water (rivers) in the area include the Rio Grande.
Numerous other surface water courses (streams, creeks, arroyos and
draws) which range from small perennial streams to ephemeral drainages
are typical of the arid southwest. Because most of these smaller
surface water courses typically terminate in playa-lake plains or
floors of the basins they are only discussed with respect to their
contribution to groundwater recharge.
The groundwater resources of the region consist of a number of
alluvial and basin-fill aquifers. From east to west these groundwater
aquifers (or Basins or Bolsons) include the Tularosa/Hueco, Jornada del
Muerto, and Mesilla.
These water resources are described in the following sections first
with a physical or structural description followed by a discussion of
the water use of each. Before proceeding into these descriptions, some
general discussion of the regional physiographic setting, climate, and
hydrogeologic concepts are included.
PHYSIOGRAPHIC SETTING
Most of the area lies within the Mexican Highland section of the
Basin and Range province. The dominant landforms are gently sloping to
nearly level of the extensive intermontane basins. Basin floors merge
mountainward with broad slopes (primarily ``bajadas'' formed by
alluvial fans) that flank isolated mountain highlands and other upland
areas.
HYDROLOGIC CONCEPTS
Some basins have floors containing ephemeral-lake plains (playas)
and no surface outlets. Others contain drainageways which occasionally
discharge to lower external areas. Others are ``open'' basins that have
surface runoff to rivers. The Mesilla and Hueco Basins are ``open''
basins, and surface runoff is drained by the Rio Grande. The Tularosa
and Jornada del Muerto are closed basins, having no exterior surface
drainage.
CLIMATE
The area is typical of the arid southwest, with mostly clear skies
and limited rainfall and humidity. Average annual precipitation of most
of the area is less than 10 inches per year. As an example, the average
for Las Cruces (at the New Mexico State University station, elevation
3,880 feet) averaged 9.47 inches over the period 1959-1996.
HUECO-TULAROSA AQUIFER
A surface divide near the New Mexico/Texas State line separates the
Tularosa Basin (a closed basin) and the Hueco Basin (a through-flowing
basin) topographically. The surface divide does not correspond to a
structural or groundwater divide, and the two basins are connected by
interbasin groundwater flow from New Mexico into Texas. Because of the
interconnection, the Tularosa and Hueco Basins are considered as one
aquifer; the Hueco-Tularosa aquifer.
Total surface area of the Hueco-Tularosa aquifer is 4,160 square
miles. Approximately 67% of its land area is in New Mexico, 22% of its
land area is in Texas, and 11% is in Mexico. The aquifer is a primary
source of water for the City of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and for
military installations and smaller cities in New Mexico, Texas, and
Mexico.
Well yields in the New Mexico part of the Tularosa-Hueco aquifer
vary greatly. Well yields of 1,400 gallons/minute are reported at
elevations high on the fans decreasing to 300 to 700 gallons/minute at
the lower edges of the fans. Well yields in the mud-rich sediments
toward the center of the Tularosa Bolson are usually less than 100
gallons/minute and sometimes less than 15 gallons/minute. In the Hueco
Bolson, just east of the Franklin Mountains, yields are as much as
1,800 gallons/minute. Wells underlying Ciudad Juarez yield from 300 to
1,500 gallons/minute.
Depth to groundwater in the Hueco-Tularosa aquifer is variable.
Depth to groundwater near the Cities of Tularosa and Alamogordo at the
flanks of the Sacramento Mountains is between 20 and 150 feet.
Drawdowns in many municipal wells, up to 100 feet, have been recorded
in this area. Groundwater is at or near ground surface near White Sands
National Monument due to evaporative discharge from a wet gypsum playa.
Depth to groundwater near the White Sands Missile Range Headquarters,
at interior portions of the basin, is up to 400 feet. Little drawdown
has been recorded there. Drawdowns in the Hueco Bolson near the New
Mexico/Texas State line has been relatively small, not exceeding 30
feet. Current depth to groundwater beneath the City of El Paso is
usually between 250 and 400 feet at distances from the Rio Grande.
Present depth to groundwater beneath Ciudad Juarez varies from about
100 to 250 feet, except near the Rio Grande where depths are often less
than 70 feet.
In heavily developed parts of the Hueco-Tularosa aquifer, drawdowns
since 1940 are up to 150 feet. Pumping cones of depression in municipal
wellfields are the focal points of drawdown. Most of the drawdowns near
municipal wellfields vary between 50 and 100 feet.
Groundwater north of the New Mexico/Texas State line is usually
greater than 1,000 mg/L Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) except in
mountains and along mountain fronts, where groundwaters are dilute.
Many samples along the interior of the basin at or just south of Alkali
Flat have TDS greater than 10,000 mg/L. Near and extending across the
state line to the Rio Grande, groundwaters along the Franklin Mountains
are characteristically less than 700 mg/L TDS. Away from the recharge
areas along,the Franklin Mountains, water salinity increases to over
1,000 mg/L in many wells, reaching concentrations over 1,500 mg/L TDS
in wells along the center of the basin. The salinity of groundwater
underlying the Ciudad Juarez area are generally less than 1,000 mg/L
TDS.
Chloride and other dissolved ions have increased over time in many
of the municipal wells in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Chloride now
exceeds 250 mg/L in several of the wells in the area. Mixing due to
pumpage, leakage from mud interbeds and artesian confining beds,
cascading waters along well casing and screens, lateral salt water
encroachment, and potential upcoming have started to degrade the
freshwater zone.
Nitrate data collected between 1994 and 1995 indicate nitrate
problems in some parts of El Paso County. A cluster of wells in the
vicinity of the Old Mesa Well Field in southwestern El Paso County
exceed the 10 mg/L drinking water standard. Many of the samples in El
Paso County tested between 5 and 10 mg/L. All of the wells in Ciudad
Juarez and immediate vicinity are less than 5 mg/L.
In the Ciudad Juarez area, residential water supplies were tested
in 1987 for possible contamination of groundwater by sewage. Fecal
coliform was used as an indicator parameter. Forty-two samples were
obtained; 30 from tap water and 12 from raw groundwater. Ninety-one
percent of raw groundwater samples were fecal coliform positive. Sixty
percent of tap water samples were fecal coliform positive. The
percentage of positive bacteria detections in these samples suggested
that groundwater beneath Ciudad Juarez was contaminated by sewage.
WATER DEVELOPMENT AND WATER USE
Most groundwater discharge from the Hueco Bolson is due to pumping
withdrawals for municipal and military water supply. Quantities of
groundwater pumped from the Hueco Bolson from municipal and other
sources have increased by a factor of almost 6 since 1950. Recent
trends indicate that municipal pumpage in Mexico increased about 12.5%
between 1990 and 1994. Municipal and military pumpage in the United
States decreased 24.0% during the same time interval. Pumping trends
reflect the increased dependence on groundwater in Mexico, and partial
conversion from groundwater to surface-water use in the United States.
The Hueco Bolson has served for many decades as the principal
source of public and self-supplied domestic water for the city of El
Paso and Ciudad Juarez as well as communities in Dona Ana and Otero
counties of New Mexico. The city of El Paso has actively pursued
development of alternative supplies, rigorous conservation programs,
and recharge programs to prolong the life of the aquifer. In New
Mexico, the community of Chaparral and small acreages of irrigated
cropland in the area are principal uses of the Hueco basin water. In
the Tularosa subbasin a number of municipal systems, the White Sands
Missile Range, as well as self-supplied uses depend on the resource for
domestic supplies. Because the quality of the water in the Tularosa
subbasin (at least in the central floor area) is extremely saline
(exceeding 10,000 mg/L TDS) most systems attempt to capture groundwater
near the mountain-front recharge areas.
Water depletions for Otero County, New Mexico for 1995 were 8,448
acre-feet from surface water sources and 27,444 acre-feet from
groundwater sources. The surface water depletions were 3,860 acre-feet
for public water supply, 3,603 acre-feet for irrigated agriculture, 885
acre-feet for commercial, and 100 acre-feet for livestock. Groundwater
depletions were 23,767 acre-feet for irrigated agriculture, 2,639 acre-
feet for public water supply, 507 acre-feet for self-supplied domestic,
287 acre-feet for commercial, 216 acre-feet for livestock, and 24 acre-
feet for industrial uses.
JORNADA DEL MUERTO BOLSON
The Jornada del Muerto Bolson lies east of the Mesilla Bolson. It
is a north-south trending valley. The basin covers approximately 3,344
square miles and is approximately 12 miles across at its widest
section. The depth to the water table is between 300 to 575 feet and
the thickness of the saturated sediment is between 400 to 500 feet.
Recharge occurs primarily from precipitation and infiltration of
mountain runoff through major arroyos.
In the southern part of the basin, the estimated volume of water in
storage in the aquifer was 100,400,000 acre-feet prior to development,
the amount that had been withdrawn (pumped) between 1962 and 1994 was
about 39,850 acre-feet, and the amount remaining in storage is
100,360,000 acre-feet. Groundwater in the southern section of the
Jornada del Muerto Bolson is classified as fresh and water is the
northern section of the bolson is classified as slightly saline.
Water Development and Use
Water use in the basin is limited to public, self-supplied
domestic, industrial, commercial, and livestock. Currently no
agricultural activity is present, but there have been limited acreages
irrigated in the past.
MESILLA BASIN
The Mesilla basin aquifer system consists of floodplain alluvium
and the underlying Mesilla Bolson. It is an extensive intermontane
aquifer system which extends from southern New Mexico to northern
Mexico. It is surrounded by mountains which form the boundaries. The
Rio Grande originates in the northern New Mexico and southern Colorado
Rocky Mountains, flows through New Mexico, and forms the boundary
between Texas and Mexico on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. It is the
dominant and limiting surface water resource throughout most of its
watershed. The surface water system is comprised of the Rio Grande and
its tributaries and a network of canals, laterals and drainage ditches
that discharge to the river. The surface drainage of the Mesilla basin
covers approximately 1,100 square miles. Historically, Rio Grande flows
have been highly variable both between years and between seasons.
Average annual flow above Elephant Butte Reservoir was 569,063 acre-
feet from 1895 to 1969 with a standard deviation of 398,868 acre-feet.
This led to floods and extended periods of no flow. These flows were
stabilized by the Rio Grande Project.
The Rio Grande Floodplain, between Leasburg dam and the El Paso
narrows, is not a confined aquifer. The water table is approximately 10
to 25 feet below the land surface. Groundwater typically moves
southeastward down the valley; however, the direction is influenced by
nearby hydraulic structures such as the river, drains, canals, well
pumpage and heavily irrigated fields. Recharge to the aquifer occurs
primarily as vertical flow from the surface water system (river,
canals, laterals, and drains) and irrigated cropland fields. The
quality of the water generally reflects the quality of the surface
water system, ranging from about 500 mg/L TDS to over 1,000 mg/L TDS.
The majority of underground discharge occurs through evapotranspiration
of irrigated crops, flow to drain systems, irrigation pumping,
industrial pumping, and percolation to the underlying Mesilla Bolson.
The majority of recharge occurs through mountain front recharge and
through vertical flow of groundwater from the floodplain surface. The
quality of the groundwater varies both with depth and across the basin.
Water Development and Use
The principal source of surface water in the border region is the
Rio Grande which flows from its headwaters in Colorado and northern New
Mexico. The flows of the Rio Grande are stored in Elephant Butte and
Caballo Reservoirs. These storage units were constructed as a part of
the Rio Grande Project. The Project was authorized by Congress under
the Reclamation Act of 1902 to provide irrigation water farms in Texas
and New Mexico by capturing flood-flows and storing them in Elephant
Butte Reservoir. Elephant Butte Reservoir, at the time of its
construction, had a capacity of over 2.6 million acre-feet, but
sediment from up-stream lands has reduced the effective storage to just
over 2 million acre-feet in recent years. Caballo Reservoir (about 28
miles down-stream was built in 1938 to hold waters released from
Elephant Butte for power generation and to provide additional flood-
storage capacity. The usable capacity of Caballo Reservoir, including
100,000 acre-feet of flood storage, is 331,500 acre-feet. The Project
was to include diversion dams and a canal delivery system. The Project
also provided supplemental water (Project return-flow) to about 18,000
acres in the Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No.
1 below El Paso.
At the time of the 1902 Reclamation Act, Texas was not eligible for
participation as there were no public lands in Texas to help under-
right the reclamation fund. Because farmers in the El Paso, Texas area
claimed the right to use the flows of the Rio Grande for irrigation, as
did farmers in New Mexico, some accommodation was necessary. A division
of the anticipated supply from Elephant Butte, between the two states,
was a necessity, if the Project was to go forward. In 1904 an agreement
between business people from El Paso and Las Cruces formed the basis
for a Congressional act in 1905. The 1905 Reclamation Extension Act was
in fact a Congressional adjudication of the rights in each state and
should be considered to be an equitable apportionment of the waters of
the Lower Rio Grande. The 1905 law extended the benefits of the
Reclamation Act of 1902 to include the El Paso area, provided that all
irrigated lands in the Project would have the same standing with
respect to priority dates and charges; and established the guidelines
for the division of the water supply above and below El Paso on the
basis that New Mexico would be allowed to irrigate 110,000 acres, and
Texas would be allowed to irrigate 70,000 acres.
Another primary objective of the Project was to ensure that the
United States could deliver water to Mexico under the provisions of the
Treaty of 1906. For many years, Mexico had complained that excessive
uses of Rio Grande water were depriving Juarez Valley farmers of their
historic supply. In 1906 a treaty was negotiated with Mexico for the
delivery of 60,000 acre-feet of water annually at the Acequia Madre
ditch that headed below the principal diversion at El Paso. The U.S.
has delivered the amount of water to Mexico in most years, but has
reduced these deliveries during periods of short-supply. The concept
behind this reduction is that all acreage under the Project would
receive the same duty of water and the water delivered to Mexico is
Project water.
The acreage to be irrigated in Texas and New Mexico under the
Project and municipal water-uses were arrived at by means of contracts
between the Bureau of Reclamation and each of the irrigation districts
and by three party contracts that included the Bureau of Reclamation
and both of the districts. The most important of these joint agreements
was signed in September 1937 when the districts were allowed to
increase their authorized acreage: 90,640 acres in New Mexico and
69,010 in Texas. This increased the authorized Project acreage to
159,650 acres. The 1937 contract is important as it provided for a
proportional sharing of shortages (67/155 for the Texas district and
88/155 to the New Mexico district).
Colorado, Texas and New Mexico entered into an interstate compact
that divided the supply of the Rio Grande between the three states by
providing sliding-scale, delivery-tables. New Mexico's deliveries at
Elephant Butte Dam were to ``Texas'', or in reality to the Project, as
it was the ``unit'' beneficially using all of the surface water below
that point. The Compact did not further divide the water supply between
New Mexico users (Elephant Butte Irrigation District) and the Texas
users (El Paso County Water Improvement District #1). The Compact did
recognize the delivery requirement to Mexico. Article VIII of the Rio
Grande Compact, defined the ``normal release'' of ``usable water'' for
the Project from Elephant Butte Reservoir to be 790,000 acre-feet per
year. This amount provided for the ``full Project'' allocation of
730,000 acre-feet per year plus 60,000 acre-feet for delivery to
Mexico.
Total water use in 1995 for Dona Ana County was 250,785 acre-feet
with 171,286 acre-feet from surface water and 79,500 acre-feet from
groundwater. Surface water depletions were primary used by irrigated
agriculture (171,156 acre-feet) with a small amount (41 acre-feet and
89 acre-feet) for livestock and commercial uses, respectively. These
depletions do not include all of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District
which extends into Sierra County. Groundwater depletions were used by
irrigated agriculture (49,150 acre-feet), public water supply (20,716
acre-feet), livestock (3,385 acre-feet), commercial (2,980 acre-feet),
power (2,439 acre-feet), and self-supplied domestic uses (769 acre-
feet).
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Professor Peach, will
you go ahead with your testimony, and then I will have some
questions.
STATEMENT OF JAMES PEACH, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS,
NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Peach. Thank you very much, Senator Bingaman. It is
always a pleasure to see you here, and I would like to echo Mr.
Woods' welcome to New Mexico State University. As requested by
Mr. Connor, my remarks will be brief. That is a hard job for an
academic, but I will keep them brief. But I provided copies of
some articles, and I have also provided Mr. Connor with 100
copies of some charts I am going to refer to. Can they be given
to the audience? They have been?
The Chairman. Those are out on the table, I am told. Does
everyone have a copy of those? If not, maybe we should just
take a minute here and get copies. Shelley, you might see if
there are some extra copies we can distribute.
This is a table on population projections?
Mr. Peach. Yes, and also some charts that I am going to
refer to. And I anticipated not having an overhead, so I can do
it high-tech, low-tech or no-tech.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Peach. I will not say New Mexico Tech.
The Chairman. Please go ahead.
Mr. Peach. You bet. My comments will be focused mainly on
demographic trends in Dona Ana County, El Paso County, and
Ciudad Juarez. And for brevity, I will simply prefer to those
three areas as the region.
The regional demand for water depends, for the most part,
on the size and characteristics of the population, income
levels, the industrial structure of the region, and the price
of water. The price of water is especially important. A few
weeks ago at a conference in El Paso, I purchased a 20-ounce
bottle of water for a dollar out of a machine. That is 5 cents
an ounce, or $2.1 million per acre-foot. And at that price, I
would be happy to solve the water problems of southern New
Mexico. A shortage has meaning only in relation to price.
All of these factors are important determinants of the
demand for water, but it is safe to say that very few people
would be interested in regional water issues if the regional
population were declining instead of growing rapidly. Recent
census data indicate that the population of the region is now
just slightly over 2 million people, 1.2 million in Ciudad
Juarez, right at 700,000 in El Paso, and 180,000 in Dona Ana
County.
Consistent with historical trends, the region's population
continues to grow rapidly. Chart 1 that you have in front of
you has some population growth rates there.* At current growth
rates, the region's population is increasing by about 75,000
people a year. In other words, this three-county area, if you
like, is adding a city about the size of Las Cruces annually,
and that is certainly going to be a big issue in water-related
issues.
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* The charts have been retained in committee files.
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Detailed population projections based on the 2000 census
data have not been completed yet. There are a variety of
organizations that do that, including New Mexico State
University, the University of New Mexico, the city of El Paso,
Ciudad Juarez, but no one has completed the detailed
projections yet. But if we take a very simple approach and use
the growth rates of the 1990's, the population of the region
would increase to about 4.5 million people by the year 2025.
Four and a half million people in the area is going to change
the way we look at water issues, I think.
Yet there is also a great deal of evidence that uncertainty
is the key to looking at population growth in the region. There
are several reasons for this uncertainty. First, population
projections of a region are inherently more difficult than
population projections of larger areas. At the world level, of
the three components of demographic change, births, deaths, and
migration, at the world level we do not have to worry about net
migration. Given current technology, we are not exporting
people to Mars yet. So that leaves births and deaths, and yet
the best projections of the world population from the United
Nations suggest a tremendous range of 7.3 billion to 10.7
billion by the year 2050.
Similar variation in the projections of the United States
and Mexico appear in the projections of those two nations. The
U.S. population projected from the U.S. Census Bureau, those
population projections range from 280 million to almost 500
million by the year 2050. In Mexico, there is a similar broad
range from about 135 million to nearly 275 million.
The difference in those projections, both in the United
States and Mexico, is migration, migration, and migration. The
fertility and mortality assumptions do not make a lot of
difference to those projections.
At the regional level, we have inherently even more
uncertainty about what the population will be. A range of
somewhere between 3 and 6 million by the year 2025 in the
three-county region is probably a pretty good guess.
A second reason for uncertainty is the aging of the
population. People in this room, of course, are immune to that,
but nationally in both Mexico and the United States, the
population is aging. An older population will have fewer births
and more deaths than a younger population of similar size. So
we are going to see a slowdown both nationally and within the
region of population growth that is due to natural increase,
the excess of births over deaths. That is almost inevitable.
If you look at the charts, I have given you two population
pyramids there. The first one is from 1900 of the United
States. And in 1900, nearly all populations had this classic
pyramid shape. Most people were in the younger age groups. 50
percent were below the age of 20. In 1900, nearly all
populations looked like that.
The next chart is one of my favorites and usually gets a
little bit of a chuckle. That is Sun City, Arizona, in 1990,
and that is sort of an exaggerated look at where we are all
headed. Median age in Sun City is 74, and a place like that has
very little demographic momentum, the tendency of the
population to grow due to its age and sex structure.
Now, the point on the aging of the population, we are
getting older in the region as well. In New Mexico we now have
a median age of 34.6 years, very, very close to the national
median of 35.3 years. Historically, we had a very young
population. As we age, our population growth rate in New Mexico
is going to slow down. In Dona Ana County, the median age is
now 30 years. In El Paso it is 30 years. In Ciudad Juarez, the
median age is 23 years. And so we are going to see this decline
in natural increase of the population both from reduced crude
birth rates and increased crude death rates.
A third source of demographic uncertainty is that regional
migration patterns are highly sensitive to economic conditions.
Economists always indicate that people move from areas of high
unemployment and low income to areas of low unemployment and
high income. Economic conditions matter.
But when it comes to projecting the population, we would
have to project those economic variables at the regional level.
We would have to predict employment growth, unemployment rates,
income levels, the growth of income relative to other areas.
That is a very difficult job. It is a difficult job even at the
national level, and I am sure Mr. Greenspan would confirm that.
So we have a great deal of uncertainty added by economic
uncertainty in the future as well.
A fourth source of uncertainty regarding the future
population of the area has to do with the national policy
context. Unlike Mexico, the United States has no national
population policy, but we have a lot of policies that do affect
the growth of population and will affect the growth of
population in the region. Immigration policy, currently being
debated in Washington, is an obvious example. But there are
many, many others. We have tax deductions for children in the
income tax code. We have educational subsidies. Trade policy
can even affect population growth in the region. NAFTA has
certainly affected the region's population growth. The
possibility of a North American common market would change that
equation as well.
Transportation and land use policies at the local level and
State level. Tax policies may change population growth. The
list is a long one. But the key point is that the national,
State, and local policy context add even greater uncertainty to
the demographic situation in the region.
I will conclude with some very brief comments. A reasonable
range of population for the year 2025 for the region is
somewhere between 3 and 6 million people. No one knows what
that figure is going to be. Rational water planning in the
region requires a recognition that we do not know what that
figure will be. We should plan both for the high and the low
figure.
Thank you very much. I will be happy to answer questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, both of you. Let me just
ask a few questions here.
Karl, in your testimony you sort of gave us some of the
facts on the water supply and quality in the various
underground aquifers. I have read some of these reports, which
I am sure you have read as well, about the rate at which the
groundwater is being depleted, particularly in Juarez. And one
projection was that Juarez groundwater could be depleted to a
point where by the year 2005, they would no longer be able to
get the water from the current sources.
What is your projection as to groundwater depletion in
Juarez? Is that something that you are able to measure and
monitor and make projections on or not?
Mr. Wood. Well, the people and the authorities in Juarez
are doing that. We feel that they are putting down more wells
and they are doing a better job in collecting more data each
year. 2005-06 is a number that comes up often. It is a scary
number. It is not that they will be out of water. Their water
would be more difficult to obtain and it will be of a lower
quality to where by that time, they would like other sources.
The Chairman. To what extent is there binational
cooperation? I gather there is dispute between our projections
about water depletion and Mexico's projections about water
depletion here in the same area. To what extent are we
cooperating between the two countries in the testing and
development of the information that goes into those
projections?
Mr. Wood. We are in the infancy in cooperation,
cooperation, but we have several efforts that have been
started. The BECC group, with Fernando Macias, is off and
running in a project to do this. The Paso Del Norte Water Task
Force, which is a group of academics with Mexico, west Texas,
and southern New Mexico, also have efforts to look into this.
The New Mexico/Texas Water Commission and its Watershed Council
are looking into this.
They are efforts that are relatively new, relatively short
in funds right now, but with much potential for the future. And
I think we are off starting to do that, but we are a bit of a
ways away from having a real good handle on what is available
and where.
The Chairman. It would seem to me that a first obvious step
in trying to get a better cross-border cooperation in dealing
with potential water shortages would be a good sort of
monitoring ongoing assessment effort that involved both
countries. Am I right in thinking that way?
Mr. Wood. You are absolutely right.
The Chairman. And if you do not have that in place,
everything else will sort of falter because everyone has a
different idea of where they are?
Mr. Wood. That is right, exactly.
The Chairman. You say a lot more is needed in that regard?
Mr. Wood. I feel that is correct.
The Chairman. Okay. Let me ask you about this map that you
have here attached to your testimony. There is a map showing
the Mesilla Basin, and I think you indicated in your testimony,
as I understood it, that that is the main source of water for
Las Cruces and for Dona Ana County. It also goes over into
Mexico. To what extent is Mexico using water from the Mesilla
Basin?
Mr. Wood. I do not believe they are using much right now,
but the potential is there to use quite a bit.
The Chairman. Do you know if they have plans to do that?
Mr. Wood. Yes, they do.
The Chairman. Do you know anything more specific about
their plans?
Mr. Wood. I am sorry, I do not.
The Chairman. The water there in the Tularosa Basin, I have
always thought that that was, at least up around Alamogordo and
Tularosa and that area, the water was so saline, or brackish,
that it really was not usable for any kind of municipal or
industrial use. Am I wrong about that?
Mr. Wood. Well, it can be used if it is diluted. And that
is why water from the Bonito Lake is brought around the
mountain and taken to Alamogordo and it is diluted with the
local water. So it is somewhat usable. In its raw form, no, you
would not want to drink it. You would chew it rather than drink
it. But it can be diluted and used.
The Chairman. But I understand, from what you are saying,
that the same aquifer is much less saline when you get further
south?
Mr. Wood. That is right.
The Chairman. And El Paso is able to use that water?
Mr. Wood. Right. And also when you get towards the edges of
the bolson, it is more usable.
The Chairman. One of the charts, Professor Peach, that you
have here shows Las Cruces per capita income as a percentage of
U.S. per capita income. That is not something you talked about,
but you have got a chart here. And I was struck by how this has
dropped over the years. I do not know, I cannot tell from this
chart, my eyesight is not good enough to tell what years you
are covering here. But it looks like you are starting----
Mr. Peach. I have a larger copy if you would like.
The Chairman. You are starting up around 75 percent of U.S.
per capita income, and then we are ending up at the end of the
chart down close to 60 percent.
Mr. Peach. I skipped that chart. It is a rather dramatic
chart. It is a chart that looks similar if we look at almost
any of the U.S./Mexico border counties. It is a chart that
starts in 1969, which is the first year that the Bureau of
Economic Analysis produced income figures at the county level.
And it shows a steady deterioration of per capita income in
Dona Ana County--El Paso County looks the same, so do the other
border counties--since 1969, right up through 1999 relative to
the Nation.
It does not mean that per capita income has been declining
all those years. It simply means that relative to the national
figure, we have been declining. And, you know, NAFTA did not
interrupt that trend. Nothing----
Mr. Bingaman. Did it contribute to the trend?
Mr. Peach. I do not think so. It is a trend that started
long before NAFTA was implemented. I can remember providing
testimony in Washington, D.C. almost 20 years ago in a
committee saying that I suspected in 20 years, the trend would
still be there. The border counties would have low per capita
income relative to the Nation.
In the current context, that has a lot of importance, both
in terms of attracting population from other areas, it will
change water demand, but also because income level is a prime
determinant of water demand.
The Chairman. You mean the higher a person's income, the
more water they use?
Mr. Peach. You bet.
The Chairman. So you are saying that if, in fact, we had
not declined substantially in our per capita income relative to
the rest of the country since 1967, we would be using a lot
more water than we are today.
Mr. Peach. I suspect so
The Chairman. So as we make progress in improving the
economy, we are going to dig ourselves into a deeper hole as
far as water?
Mr. Peach. We are going to consume more water. Poor people,
generally speaking, do not build a lot of golf courses, and
other high-use kinds of water things. If we had very high
income in the area, we would use more water.
The Chairman. Do you see anything that is going to reverse
or affect this trend of lower per capita income as a percent of
U.S. per capita income?
Mr. Peach. I do not.
The Chairman. You think it will continue to drop?
Mr. Peach. Drop or remain about the same over the next
decade or so. I have spent a long time studying the U.S./Mexico
border economy, and as you know, the border economy is a very
complex place. But I do not see anything on the horizon that is
going to change those trends, either in Dona Ana County or in
El Paso County.
It may level off a little bit simply due to the change of
the age distribution of the population. Historically, we have
had a very, very young population. Young people do not enter
the labor force at the high end of the wage scale. They enter
the labor force at the low end of the wage scale. So as we get
older, we are going to perhaps improve a little bit. But we
need much more than that to reverse this kind of a trend.
The Chairman. Let me ask you. I do not know if you have
gotten down to this level of specificity, Professor Peach. Have
you done any research into the trends with the agricultural
economy in this part of the State, as to whether or not it has
improved, declined, remained the same?
Mr. Peach. No, I have not. The one minor exception, I do
look at industrial structure up and down the border. Pretty
generally, agricultural employment in the area, in Dona Ana
County, has remained relatively constant. It has been declining
somewhat in El Paso County. And I could get those figures for
you easily enough because El Paso County, of course, now the
urban area is absorbing most of the land area of El Paso.
But I am not an agricultural economist and have not really
studied the agricultural sector.
The Chairman. Let me ask Karl just another question or two
about your chart. When you look at this chart showing the
various underground aquifers that are available for use by
municipalities, industrial customers, agriculture here in this
region, the only surface water is the Rio Grande, and you have
these particular underground aquifers. Are there others in
Mexico that are close enough to be useful to a metropolitan
area like Juarez?
Mr. Wood. Yes, there are other aquifers, specifically one
called the Bismark aquifer, which is further away from--it is a
ways away from Juarez, and they are exploring those presently
as potential sources for the future.
The Chairman. But they do not currently obtain any of their
water out of that aquifer?
Mr. Wood. I do not believe so.
The Chairman. Well, this is useful. I appreciate the
testimony by both of you. And we will go on to the second
panel, then. Thank you very much.
Did Kevin Bixby show up here? He was going to be on the
first panel. He has not, so we will go to the second panel.
Mayor Smith, Ruben, come right ahead, Gary Esslinger, John
Burkstaller and Edd Fifer.
Just so that everyone is clear, once we hear from this
panel and ask questions, Tom Turney, who is the State engineer
for New Mexico, I wish to go ahead with his testimony, and
we'll do that as well this morning.
So let me just start. First let us hear from our good
mayor, Mayor Ruben Smith, mayor of the city of Las Cruces,
welcome. Thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF RUBEN A. SMITH, MAYOR,
CITY OF LAS CRUCES, NM
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for the invitation and we
thank you very much for coming to Las Cruces, as usual, and I
will be looking forward to listening to you during the lunch
today, also.
I wanted to make just a little apology. I was sitting next
to Gary Esslinger and it looked like everyone was turning
through copies. I said, Gary, were we supposed to have copies?
He said, You are supposed to have 15 copies. And we did not get
that memo, evidently, so we are preparing it to bring.
The Chairman. Not a problem.
Mr. Smith. But my presentation, you do not even need
copies, Senator. It is going to be at a level to where I think
anybody walking in without any background in water could
understand and hopefully appreciate the level that we are at
right now.
Overall, I think it is important to note we are talking
about the Rio Grande surface water, we are talking about
groundwater, and everybody has talked very nicely about the
different aquifers that we collectively pump from. I think it
is important to understand that about 85 percent of the water
that is used is from the river, most of it being for
agricultural use. And these are round percentages. About 15
percent of the water used is groundwater.
Now, historically, the city of Las Cruces has always pumped
from the ground. We have not used surface water up to this
point. And I will get to that at the end of my presentation.
But several years ago, we realized that we, as a
municipality, were facing challenges that many other
municipalities in the southern part of the State were facing.
We were not necessarily in crisis situation, but we realized
that we were going to have to be taking some actions to face
those challenges or problems.
And to put it in perspective, the city of Las Cruces has,
to its credit right now--I am thankful that Tom Turney is here,
because I am going to lobby him just a little bit more. Right
now, presently, the city of Las Cruces has 22,000 acre-feet of
water that we are utilizing, that we are able to utilize. We
are pumping and using about 20,000 acre-feet. It does not take
a mathematician or a brilliant mayor to tell you that that is
only about a 10 percent cushion, and we are living kind of
right on the edge.
So I cannot pick on Tom Turney today, because it would go
back to 1981 that we made applications for an additional 14,000
acre-feet from one of the basins that was described earlier
called the Jornada Basin. That is a basin that there is very
little recharge. And this is something that we have changed the
direction from our 40-year master plan as a city, where we were
solely depending on groundwater. So temporarily, what I am
telling you is that we have enough water. With the additional
14,000 acre-feet, that will get us into the future.
And what we have done in addition to that, to couple to
that, is that we have taken some conservation steps. First of
all, we have developed what they call an inclining block rate
that truly just means the more water you use to water your
lawns, the more you are going to pay for it, and you pay for it
dearly. We have gone to the same system at that time the city
of El Paso does, and I think the city of Albuquerque,
alternating days. If you live on one side of the street, it is
every other day of the week, and the same thing on the opposite
side of the street.
We have also, by doing those conservation issues, we have
cut down, a reduction by about 10 percent of the water that is
being used. And after about 4 years, we are approaching the
1995 amount of water that we were using.
Along with that, the city has taken to replace most of the
water meters so that we can reduce the unaccountable water that
we have had over the years, and we are doing that every seven
years. And this will save an additional 5 to 10 percent, we are
computing, on that.
That is what we have done kind of in a reactive mode. In
terms of a proactive stance, we have taken three different
steps. First, we have lobbied the State engineer. And I spoke
to Tom Turney as we came in this morning and he said the
application for the 14,000 acre-feet looks very good. The
numbers might not be what we would like--and he did not tell me
exactly what that meant--but I am optimistic that we can
resolve the 14,000 acre-feet.
I was hoping he would give us a gift by September. But for
sure, it looks like it will be before the end of the year. And
that is something very critical that we have been working on.
That is the first thing that we have done.
The second thing that we have done is to establish a
relationship, and we did receive the memo from your staff
regarding a relationship between the agricultural community and
the municipalities. What I can tell you without a doubt is that
we have established a communication system, not only
communication system, but a working system, with our neighbors
to the south. Both municipalities belong to this organization,
both universities, both irrigation districts.
And I can tell you that it has not been an easy step to
take, because this has never been done in the past. But I can
tell you that it has been one of the most positive challenges
that I think all of us collectively have taken. And I can tell
you it is been something that has been very, very fruitful to
us.
One other thing that I would like to say is that we have
formed a Lower Rio Grande Water Users Organization that is
comprised of essentially everybody, including municipal water
organizations, the university, different municipalities, so
that we could have one unified voice when it comes to going to
Santa Fe to lobby for funds, and that has proved to be very
successful.
And I have got to thank Tom Turney, because it is actually
through his, not insistence, but his encouragement. He threw
out, said something, mayor, you need to speak with one voice as
opposed to everybody going individually to lobby Santa Fe. And
that has been very, very beneficial to all of us down here.
We have an agreement with EBID that I think Gary Esslinger
will probably get more into detail, but it deals with transfers
of agricultural use of water for municipal purposes. And the
nice thing about this, it is the first of its kind in the
State.
The third proactive step that we have taken is dealing with
the transfer system to facilitate the water from the
agricultural to municipal and industrial purposes. We have also
been extremely active in the adjudication process, and this is
so that--I think everybody will understand that the negotiation
process is going to be a very, very difficult one, and the
presence of a city is absolutely critical in the resolution of
that.
The only thing, Senator, I would like to end in saying is I
started out with telling you that the city of Las Cruces has
essentially pumped water since the inception of our founding.
What we have done over the years is collectively gone to
Washington to lobby, in particular, the EPA. Do not hold me to
the year, but about 4 or 5 years ago we went hand-in-hand and
we lobbied along with the city of El Paso and irrigation
district for, if I recall, it was a little bit over $2 million
so that El Paso could receive funds to build, if I recall, an
additional surface water treatment plant.
We did that because we felt very strongly that the city of
El Paso was at the position, a far more critical position than
what the city of Las Cruces is. But when we did that, we had an
agreement and an understanding that approximately 10 years in
the future, the city of Las Cruces will be in line to build our
first surface water treatment plant. We feel very strongly
about that because the question was asked about the water
situation in El Paso and Juarez.
We do not feel we are as critical here, but we can no
longer just sit back and hope that there is plenty of water to
be pumped up. So what we are doing is doing a very visionary
thing, and that is working with our colleagues to the south so
that in 10 years, they will be supporting us when we go back
for funding for our first water treatment plant.
And that is basically my comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ruben A. Smith, Mayor, City of Las Cruces, NM
Five years ago, the City of Las Cruces was in a situation that many
municipalities in New Mexico are in at the present time. We are facing
some major problems associated with water supply and did not realize
the gravity of that situation. Do not misinterpret those statements. We
were not in a crisis situation, but could have been had we not taken
immediate action. The problems were:
1. We were utilizing 20,000 acre-feet of our 22,000 acre-feet water
right, leaving one of the fastest growing cities in the State with only
a 10% cushion for water supply.
2. Applications for an additional 14,000 acre-feet per year of
water from the Jornada Basin had been sitting in a pile of paper on the
State Engineer's desk since 1981.
3. The City's forty-year master plan relied solely on groundwater
pumping with the increase coming from a mined basin (the Jornada) that
has very little recharge. When Council became aware of these issues,
action was taken immediately to remedy the problems.
a. A conservation plan was developed and adopted. This plan
included an inclining block rate for water consumption, lawn
watering restrictions, and other conservation measures. This
relieved the immediate crisis as water consumption was reduced
by 10% almost immediately. After four years, the total
consumption is now approaching that of 1995.
b. Water meter replacement and line repairs have accelerated
to reduce unaccounted for water. This will save an additional
5-10% in the future.
Those were reactionary measures to avert a crisis. We then became
proactive to solve a problem and address future needs.
Proactive #1
We lobbied the State Engineer, the Governor, and the legislature
for action on these pending applications. Those efforts have paid off.
We have been promised a decision this fall (after 20 years).
Proactive #2
We evaluated our position on future supply and determined that we
should maximize our groundwater right, but plan to utilize surface
water to accommodate future growth.
1. We amended and enlarged our groundwater right declarations.
2. Most importantly, we began to develop a positive relationship
and later a partnership with the irrigation district. We went to the
legislature together, and initiated legislation to increase the lease
term and later to form Municipal Water Users Organizations (MWUA)
within irrigation districts. We have entered into agreements with the
EBID that are the basis of transfers from agricultural use of water to
municipal use of the same water, the first of its kind in the State.
Only last week, the EBID board of directors approved a new policy for
MWUA. This policy was the result of eight months of negotiations
between the City and the District. (Steve Hernandez has or will address
that policy).
3. We are now in the process of amending our forty-year plan to
reflect this move to surface water and to determine when and how it
will occur. (The action of the ongoing adjudication will have a large
influence on timing).
Proactive #3
Water supply is an ongoing effort as is community growth and
development. For those reasons, our efforts will continue. We are
working to develop a transfer system that will not inhibit or delay the
transfer of water from Agriculture to Municipal and Industrial
purposes. This may be done through negotiations, or the courts, but it
will be pursued by the City.
We are becoming very active in the adjudication process. As the
second largest City in the State of New Mexico, we are responsible to
provide water to 80,000 citizens.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Appreciate those
comments.
John Burkstaller, who is the chief technical officer with
the El Paso Water Utilities. Thank you very much for coming.
STATEMENT OF JOHN BURKSTALLER, P.E., CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER,
EL PASO WATER UTILITIES PUBLIC SERVICE BOARD
Mr. Burkstaller. Thank you very much for inviting us. I am
not going to be quite as extemporaneous as Mayor Smith was. He
did an excellent job. But I want to go through some issues that
we think are very important, and I have brought some written
testimony with me.
El Paso Water Utilities is the regional planner and
provider of water and wastewater services to over 700,000
people in the El Paso County area. Our combined regional
population--and I missed Professor Peach's talk--but I am
sure----
The Chairman. Pull that microphone a little closer.
Mr. Burkstaller. Our combined regional population,
including the city of Juarez, is over 2 million now, and it is
expected to grow substantially, as I am sure Professor Peach
elaborated on earlier. Along with that, of course, is going to
be the demand for additional water and wastewater service.
We face a very serious problem of increased demand for
water service while our groundwater aquifers, that are the bulk
of our supply, are being rapidly depleted. The aquifers, or
bolsons, provide approximately 57 percent of the city's water
needs and 100 percent of Juarez's water needs.
Juarez currently draws water from the southern end of the
Hueco Bolson, while El Paso draws water from both the Hueco and
the Mesilla. Southern Dona Ana County also relies heavily on
water from the Mesilla, and Juarez plans to develop wells in
the southern end of that aquifer in Mexico, which they call the
Conejos Medanos.
The committee is familiar with the challenge that we face
in extending the life of these aquifers by identifying and
developing new replacement sources of supplies. We also need to
conserve and make the best use of these resources, and we need
to partner with other entities within the region to identify
bistate and binational solutions.
The challenges are formidable given the complex political,
jurisdictional, environmental, legal and technical issues.
Sufficient water is available to sustain this expected
population growth, but the costs of ensuring an adequate water
supply are going to be high. Given the low per capita income of
the region, we will need major Federal support to implement
these solutions.
El Paso Water Utilities is actively engaged in a number of
initiatives, including construction of a 20-million-gallon-per-
day desalination plant. If we are able to team with Fort Bliss,
it may start out at 29 MGD, which would be the largest inland
facility in the nation.
We are also involved in expansion of the reclaimed water
programs and joint water resource planning with Juarez and with
southern New Mexico, southern Dona Ana County, supported by the
Border Environment Cooperation Commission. We are also looking
at the possible importation of ground and surface water from
outlying areas.
Virtually all these initiatives require substantial
investments in infrastructure. We estimate that El Paso Water
Utilities, even with our new per capita consumption goal of 140
gallons per capita per day, which is probably the lowest in the
United States, perhaps Tucson is quite close, but we are one of
the lowest per capita consumption rates in the country.
Even with this conservation goal, we'll still have to spend
approximately $900 million over the next 10 years to address
all of our water supply issues, as well as deal with water
quality issues such as the new upcoming arsenic drinking water
limit. Although we are proceeding rapidly----
The Chairman. What's the arsenic level in your drinking
water?
Mr. Burkstaller. On the Hueco side, it runs slightly less
than 10. On the Mesilla side, it averages 16, but some of the
wells are up in the 20s. We have got a cost estimate right now
of about $90 million to comply with 10, maybe somewhat reduced
by the new technologies.
Although we are proceeding rapidly ahead with desalination
and reuse projects, the ultimate source of sustainable water
for the region is obviously the Rio Grande. All other available
supplies are both very expensive and exhaustible. These
alternative supplies should be kept in reserve for drought and
peak demands. Sensible regional water planning requires that
the Rio Grande water be made available to meet municipal
demands.
El Paso engaged in many years of litigation with entities
in southern New Mexico over the right to export groundwater. In
principle, we won. New Mexico cannot prohibit exportation.
However, along with that decision, New Mexico has the right to
impose conditions on export that led to continuing legal
battles, or at least potential legal battles, and the parties
involved ultimately agreed to a settlement. The settlement was
based on optimizing the use of the Rio Grande Project surface
water and developing mechanisms for transferring water rights,
or rights to use water, to provide additional municipal supply.
As a result of this settlement, New Mexico State
University, UTEP, the cities of El Paso and Las Cruces, Dona
Ana County also was involved, both irrigation districts, the
bureau, the International Boundary and Water Commission, and
others were involved in probably 10 years and many million
dollars' worth of water resources planning, which culminated
with the recommendation of the El Paso-Las Cruces Regional
Sustainable Water Project. The sustainable project developed a
comprehensive plan for maximizing use of surface water during
times of abundance, treating and delivering it for current
municipal needs, and banking the excess for times of shortage.
An approved environmental impact statement authorizes us to
proceed with the project, but we cannot do that. Successful
implementation of the project depends on the availability of
Rio Grande water, and additional Rio Grande water is currently
not available in the city of El Paso.
The problem is not insufficiency of supply. Records of the
bureau show that in recent years, the Rio Grande water supply
has exceeded the needs of the agricultural users, and water has
gone unused while municipalities are forced to depend on
shrinking groundwater sources. Since 1995, an average of almost
73,000 acre-feet has been left in the reservoir each year
unused by the New Mexico or Texas districts after all
irrigation demands have been met. Annually, the amount has
ranged from 36,000 to over 100,000 acre-feet.
These surpluses, which occur in non-drought years, are
partially available for reallocation in subsequent years. They
are not totally lost for the system. But we believe that they
are part of the potential solution for municipal use. With
them, we can preserve the bolsons for future drought periods,
which will surely occur.
There is more than enough water to supply the sustainable
water project in full-allotment years without taking any water
away from agricultural uses. But making it available requires
the cooperation of two irrigation districts and the Bureau of
Reclamation. Unfortunately, this cooperation has been lacking.
Instead, we see precisely the opposite pattern. The bureau
has refused to honor water rights contracts between El Paso
Water Utilities and El Paso County Improvement District Number
1, contracts that would have allowed El Paso to significantly
reduce its dependence on the bolsons. Reclamation has also
refused to approve water rights contracts between the district
and our wholesale customer, the Lower Valley Water District.
In similar fashion, reclamation and EP-1 have chosen to
pursue very strict interpretations of our existing water rights
contracts. This resulted in El Paso losing over 13,000 acre-
feet of water rights that the EP-1 had historically honored and
credited for our use. We bought some of that back at a much
higher rate, but did not recover all of it.
Although New Mexico statutes no longer prohibit the export
of water, they continue to prevent us--let me--interstate
cooperation is really no better. That is the point. Although
the statutes no longer prohibit the export of water, they
continue to present a severe obstacle to the sale of New Mexico
water to El Paso, even water in excess of New Mexico's existing
demand.
If our goal is to use available water resources for the
maximum benefit of the citizens of the region, our current
legal and political structure fails to achieve this goal.
Available water from the Rio Grande is going unused while
municipalities continue to deplete limited groundwater sources
and contemplate development of costly alternative supplies.
Farmers who might welcome the opportunity to periodically sell
their irrigation water to the municipalities are prohibited
from doing so by the Bureau of Reclamation and the districts.
We believe that good solutions exist and are achievable
through regional cooperation. We believe that Rio Grande water
can be made available through conservation and through
establishing a voluntary water market that would allow
irrigators to sell water to municipalities. This can be
accomplished without disruption of the agricultural economy.
Normal municipal development retires agricultural land make
additional water available.
Conservation through lining of canals has already made
thousands of acre-feet of conserved water available. Additional
canal lining and other agricultural conservation practices can
make more water available. A practical forbearance or water
marketing program workable for both the city of El Paso as a
dependable source of water and El Paso Water Improvement
District Number 1, farmers, as a source of revenue should be
implemented.
Political and institutional constraints, whether within the
irrigation districts, across State lines or imposed by the
Federal bureaucracy, should not be allowed to limit development
of a market which puts water to the highest value beneficial
use. The United States, both through its laws and agencies,
should facilitate making Rio Grande water available.
The municipalities, the farmers, the irrigation districts,
the Bureau of Reclamation, and most importantly the citizens of
the region will all benefit from a system which allows the
water to be marketed to its highest use. We solicit the
committee's support in making this a reality. We are confident
that the region's water and wastewater issues can be addressed
to ensure both thriving municipal and agricultural communities.
That's it, and I expect it to generate quite a few
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Burkstaller follows:]
Prepared Statement of John Burkstaller, P.E., Chief Technical Officer,
El Paso Water Utilities Public Service Board
My name is John Burkstaller, and I am the Chief Technical Officer
for the El Paso Water Utilities--Public Service Board. El Paso Water
Utilities is the regional planner and provider of water and wastewater
services to over 700,000 people in the greater metropolitan area of El
Paso. Our combined regional population, including the City of Juarez,
is over two million. The population within the region continues to grow
and is expected to double in the next 20 years, as is the demand for
water and wastewater service.
Our region faces a very real and very serious problem. Concurrent
with the expected increase in population and increased demands for
water service, our local groundwater aquifers are being rapidly
depleted. The aquifers or bolsons provide approximately 57% of our
City's water needs and 100% of the water needs for the City of Juarez,
Chihuahua, Mexico. Juarez currently draws water from the southern end
of the Hueco Bolson, while El Paso draws groundwater from both the
Hueco and Mesilla Bolsons. Southern Dona Ana County also relies heavily
on water from the Mesilla Bolson, and Juarez plans to develop wells in
the southern end of this aquifer, which they call the Conejos Medanos,
in the near future.
The Committee is familiar with the challenge we face of extending
the life of these aquifers by identifying and developing new sources of
supply, conserving and making the best use of our existing resources,
and partnering with other entities within the region to identify bi-
state and bi-national solutions to the region's water problems. The
challenges are formidable given the complex political, jurisdictional,
environmental, legal, and technical constraints in each area.
Sufficient water is available to sustain the expected population
growth, but the costs of ensuring an adequate water supply are going to
be high. Given the low per capita income of the Region, we will need
major federal support to implement these solutions.
El Paso Water Utilities is actively engaged in a number of
initiatives including construction of a 20 million gallon per day
desalination plant, continuing improvement of our conservation efforts,
the planned expansion of reclaimed water programs, joint water resource
planning with Juarez supported by the Border Environment Cooperation
Commission (BECC), and the possible importation of ground and surface
water from outlying areas. Virtually all of these initiatives require
substantial investments in infrastructure. We estimate that El Paso
Water Utilities, even with our new per capita consumption goal of 140
gallons per day, perhaps the lowest in the Southwestern United States,
will have to expend approximately $900 million dollars over the next
ten years to address all of our water supply issues as well as deal
with increased water quality regulation, such as implementation of the
new arsenic drinking water limit.
Although we are proceeding rapidly ahead with desalination and
reuse projects, the ultimate source of sustainable water for the region
is the Rio Grande. All other available supplies are both very expensive
and exhaustible. These alternative supplies should be kept in reserve
for drought and peak demands. Sensible regional water planning requires
that Rio Grande water be available to meet municipal demands.
El Paso engaged in many years of litigation with entities in
Southern New Mexico over the right to acquire and export groundwater.
In principal we won--New Mexico cannot prohibit the exportation of
groundwater. However, New Mexico's right to impose conditions on the
export lead to continuing legal battles, and the parties ultimately
agreed to a settlement. This settlement was based on optimizing the use
of Rio Grande Project surface water and developing mechanisms for
transferring rights to use water to provide additional municipal
supply. As a result of the settlement, New Mexico State University, the
University of Texas at El Paso, the cities of El Paso and Las Cruces,
both irrigation districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and the
International Boundary and Water Commission and others were all
involved in ten years and many millions of dollars worth of water
resources planning which culminated with recommendation of the El Paso-
Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water Project. The Sustainable Water
Project developed a comprehensive plan for maximizing use of surface
water during times of abundance treating and delivering it for current
municipal needs and banking the excess for times of shortage. An
approved Environmental Impact Statement authorizes us to proceed with
the project, but we cannot. Successful implementation of the project
depends on the availability of Rio Grande water--and that water is not
currently available to the City of El Paso.
The problem is not insufficiency of supply. Records of the Bureau
of Reclamation show that in recent years the Rio Grande's water supply
has exceeded the needs of agriculture and water has gone unused while
municipalities are forced to depend on shrinking groundwater resources.
Since 1995, an average of almost 73,000 acre-feet of water have been
left in Elephant Butte Reservoir each year, unused by the New Mexico or
Texas irrigation districts after all irrigation demands have been met.
Annually the amount has ranged from 36,000 acre-feet to over 100,000
acre-feet. These surpluses, which occur in non-drought years, and are
partially available for reallocation for use in subsequent years,
should be available for municipal use. With them we can preserve the
bolsons for future drought periods which will surely occur. There is
more than enough water to supply the Sustainable Water Project in full
allotment years without taking any water away from agricultural uses,
but making it available requires the cooperation of two irrigation
districts and the Bureau of Reclamation. Unfortunately, such
cooperation has been lacking.
Instead, we see precisely the opposite pattern. The Bureau of
Reclamation has refused to honor water rights contracts between El Paso
Water Utilities and El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 (EP
#1), contracts that would have allowed El Paso to significantly reduce
its dependence on the bolsons. Reclamation has also refused to approve
water rights contracts between the District and our wholesale customer,
the Lower Valley Water District. In a similar fashion, Reclamation and
EP#1 have chosen to pursue very strict interpretations of existing
water rights contracts. This resulted in El Paso losing over 13,000
acre-feet of water rights that the EP #1 had historically honored and
credited to either El Paso Water Utilities or the Lower Valley Water
District. Interstate cooperation is no better. Although New Mexico
statutes no longer prohibit the export of water, they continue to
present a severe obstacle to the sale of New Mexico water to El Paso,
even water that is in excess of New Mexico's existing demand.
If our goal is to use available water resources for the maximum
benefit of the citizens of the region, our current legal and political
structure fails to achieve this goal. Available water from the Rio
Grande is going unused while municipalities continue to deplete limited
groundwater resources and contemplate development of costly alternative
supplies. Farmers who might welcome the opportunity to periodically
sell their irrigation water to municipalities are prohibited from doing
so by the Bureau of Reclamation and the irrigation districts.
We believe that good solutions exist and are achievable through
regional cooperation. We believe that Rio Grande water can be made
available through conservation and establishing a voluntary water
market that would allow irrigators to sell water to municipalities.
This can be accomplished without disruption of the agricultural
economy. Normal municipal development retires agricultural land, making
additional water available. Conservation through lining of canals has
already made thousands of acre-feet of ``conserved water'' available.
Additional canal lining and other agricultural conservation practices
can make more water available. A practical ``forbearance'' or water
marketing program, workable for both the City of El Paso as a
dependable source of water and for the EP #1 farmers as a source of
revenue, should be implemented. Political and institutional
constraints--whether within the irrigation districts, across the state
lines, or imposed by the federal bureaucracy--should not be allowed to
inhibit development of a market which puts the water to its highest
value beneficial use. The United States, both through its laws and its
agencies, should facilitate making Rio Grande water available for
municipal use. The municipalities, the farmers, the irrigation
districts, the Bureau of Reclamation, and most importantly the citizens
of the Region, will all benefit from a system which allows the water to
be marketed to it's highest use. We solicit the Committee's support in
making this a reality. We are confident that the region's water and
wastewater issues can be addressed to ensure both thriving municipal
and agricultural communities.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
testimony, and I will have some questions. Let me move to our
two other witnesses. First, Gary Esslinger here, who is
representing the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.
STATEMENT OF GARY ESSLINGER, TREASURER/MANAGER, ELEPHANT BUTTE
IRRIGATION DISTRICT
Mr. Esslinger. Good morning, Senator. It is a pleasure to
be here, and I am here representing the Elephant Butte
Irrigation District as their treasurer/manager. Our district
manages the New Mexico portion of the Rio Grande Project, a
supply of water to some of the most productive farmland in the
Nation. And certainly, I hope you get down to Chope's to try
some of the local chile this year. It is pretty good.
In order to understand the water supply problems of the
area, I think it is important to understand also the source of
this renewable water supply that serves southern New Mexico.
The Rio Grande Project was one of the first reclamation
projects formed in 1905 under the Reclamation Act, and that
project provided water for lands in west Texas and also in
southern New Mexico. The El Paso Water Improvement District
Number 1 manages that water for Texas and EBID, or Elephant
Butte Irrigation District, manages it for New Mexico. The
project also stores water for delivery to Mexico under the 1906
water treaty.
One important, unique aspect of our project, which I find
difficult for some people to realize is that we are paid out.
We do not owe the government anything, and we paid our
construction debt. We are a single-purpose project and we were
authorized for agricultural use only.
However, during the last 10 years, we have been thrown in a
mix with multipurpose projects, it seems, and there is
confusion as to whether or not contracts, which understandably,
when you owe someone something, they can draw you to the table
and make you sign contracts. However, we believe the opposite
in some of the contract arrangements that are being made today
with the United States and some of the irrigation districts in
the west. We believe because we are paid out, that those
contracts do not necessarily apply. And I will touch briefly on
that later on.
The other interesting thing is that we paid out in 1972 our
obligation to the United States on the construction costs of
Elephant Butte, and in 1978, we actually took over operation
and maintenance of our system. Right then we realized that, you
know, in order to take over, then we needed to actually own and
be responsible for the facilities as well. So during the other
Bush administration, we were able to get legislation passed,
which, Senator, you helped us do so, which enabled us to get
our facilities transferred as far as our drainage and canal
system. And since that time, we have operated it and now we own
those facilities.
Our project in New Mexico, the district in New Mexico under
the Rio Grande Project manages over--at approximately 90,640
acres of water-righted land. And that portion of land is
approximately 57 percent of the use of project supply, with 43
percent of that project water supply then being used by the El
Paso area district. Our average annual releases from upstream
project reservoirs are approximately 790,000 acre-feet, and
that includes the 60,000 acre-feet that we deliver to Mexico.
What I would like to just talk to you briefly about today
is how the New Mexico share of project supply will be used in
the future to address future demands in southern New Mexico. I
think probably the foremost, which has already been talked
about earlier, is the New Mexico/Texas commission. I believe
that is the instrument that has really brought everyone
together to at least begin discussing regional water planning.
Unfortunately, there is a State line that crosses in that
planning, and certainly State law in New Mexico and State law
in Texas certainly cause a hurdle. However, I believe, though,
that the attitude of the commission and certainly the progress
of the commission has pointed towards looking at surface water
as an alternative.
It became obvious to us in southern New Mexico that we
could not rely totally on an unknown quantity of groundwater as
our supply for the future. But we needed to look at a renewable
water supply, and that, of course, is the Rio Grande. That put
quite a bit of pressure on our district to begin, then,
thinking of the possible solutions that we could provide to
cities such as Las Cruces or other communities within the
valley floor that would benefit from a surface water supply.
One of the uses that the municipal and industrial purpose
is, is that they pull total, at this point, pull totally from
the groundwater supply, whereas in agriculture, we try to use
the renewable supply, which is the surface water, and then go
to our savings account, which is our groundwater supply, in
times of emergency or drought. Drought hasn't been spoken of,
as far as I know, this morning, and it is certainly something
that is here on the horizon. And we have been blessed with
about 23 years of good, full water supply. But I believe this
may be the winter that tells it all if a drought is inevitable.
However, the irrigation district feels that because we have
a renewable supply that we can count on, we feel that there is
an opportunity to work with the city of Las Cruces and other
communities to provide surface water in the future. One of the
obstacles, which is a necessary obstacle, is the stream
adjudication process, which we are working with the State
engineer in trying to work through that difficult negotiation
that everybody feels is compelled to address. And through that,
it is very emotional because we are talking water and we are
talking water rights, and water that has been used by farmers
for years. And the fear that they may lose that is a constant
reminder that certainly the process has its difficulties.
And so we understand, though, it has to be done, and in
order for us to even think about transferring water or leasing
water or selling water to a city, we have to know how much
water we own. And that is an important factor that has not been
established yet. And that has to be done in order for our
district to go forward with any kind of a lease program or
long-term program to supply a city with water. We need to know
how much water we own.
The State of New Mexico has done a great job of developing
a State regional water planning effort, and as the mayor
mentioned earlier, we are part of this Lower Rio Grande Water
Users organization that actually assists and participates in
regional planning. And we have efforts underway right now to
develop our regional plan for southern New Mexico, which
includes utilizing surface water as a resource in the future,
with projects and contracts out right now to select sites in
southern New Mexico for potential surface water treatment
plants.
The group consists of almost all the players in southern
New Mexico, which I think is very important. I believe Sunland
Park may be the only entity that was a part of the commission,
or the Lower Rio Grande Water Users group, but elected to stay
out of the group. And at the same time, though, Dona Ana County
is a great player in this group.
I think one of the most important things that we have done
to spell out exactly what we believe we could do to work as a
partner with communities in southern New Mexico is what we have
done with the city of Las Cruces. We have gone hand-in-hand to
the New Mexico State legislature to get pieces of a puzzle, if
you can imagine, that have to be put together in order to fit a
regional surface water alternative.
And what we did was we developed some legislation that
enabled our statutes, under which our irrigation district is
governed, to be able to then form municipal water users
associations, which, in turn, can then come and solicit from
the district a supply of water in the future. And the city of
Las Cruces is the first that has approached us and worked with
us to get this transaction in place.
And so just 2 weeks ago at our board meeting, the board of
the irrigation district passed an internal policy that will be
what I believe is the genesis of the process in which we will
be able to transfer water, surface water, to municipal water
users associations in the future.
The one thing that I guess we have difficulty with is even
though that we have paid out our allocated construction costs,
the Bureau of Reclamation is attempting to claim that the
Federal Government must also give its approval for transfers of
water for municipal and industrial purposes under the 1920 Act.
And EBID has filed a suit in New Mexico Federal district court
to determine whether or not such approval under that act is
necessary.
We maintain that the appropriate provisions of State water
law apply and no approval is needed by the Bureau of
Reclamation. And more importantly, we believe that the cities
and other major water users should not have to pay some tribute
to the United States in order to get this water.
Local entities in southern New Mexico are addressing how
the Rio Grande Project water managed by our district can be
used to fuel future municipal and industrial growth, and we
believe that the grass roots planning among these local
entities is the way to address the local needs. Intervention by
the Bureau of Reclamation only serves to delay the transition
and add to the final cost to the consumer.
We hope that you and your committee will question the
necessity of the Bureau of Reclamation inserting itself in a
matter of State water law.
With that, thank you very much.
The Chairman. Okay. Thank you very much. Our final witness
on this panel, Edd Fifer, is with the El Paso County Water
Improvement District Number 1. Thank you very much for being
here.
STATEMENT OF EDD FIFER, GENERAL MANAGER, EL PASO COUNTY WATER
IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT #1
Mr. Fifer. Senator, thank you very much for allowing us to
be here with you today. And of course, this is a very
entertaining subject as we go through this ordeal. I have been
the manager of the El Paso district for 23 years and very proud
of that time. Every day is a new learning experience.
Something that is real interesting about our area and our
region, I think we can teach a lot of the world about things
that we are all doing. You know, we are doing different things,
and we try to work together. I can honestly say Gary Esslinger
is my very good friend on a personal basis. John Burkstaller
was, before today, a very close friend. I think he shot me in
the back now, so we are going to have to go back to work on
that relationship again.
Water is difficult, and the things that we do with water is
extremely difficult. There are an awful lot of things that is
going on. You know, you take our irrigation district, Senator.
We have over 35,000 accounts. You do not see too many
irrigation districts in this world that have 35,000 accounts.
The reason for that is that we have a city that sits in the
center of our irrigation district. We do not sit around the
city. The city sits in the middle of our irrigation district.
And as it expands, yes, there are 100-acre parcels that go
out and become subdivision, 23-hundredths of an acre
subdivision parcels. And in the State of Texas, water rights
are permanent easements and transfer with the title to the
land. So, in turn, those lands retain those water rights. And
so when they break down, at one time I have an account of 100
acres. The next day I have 400-plus because it was subdivided.
And so that is where all the 35,000 come from. Kind of an
interesting aspect about it, though, is out of the 35,000
accounts, 31,500 of them are less than two acres in size.
But let us look at the land side of it. It only represents
19 percent of the 69,010 acres that we have. When I came to the
district 23 years ago, in 1978 or way back there before Diane
was ever born, I can assure you that there were--it represented
14 percent. And so you know, in listening to Mr. Peach a while
ago, I am kind of shaking my head trying to figure out these
numbers. Because if it took 23 years for 5 percent more of the
land to become urbanized, how much longer will agriculture be
there? According to those numbers, it is going to be there for
a long time to come.
It is very interesting. I do not come from a background in
engineering or a background in agriculture. I come from an
educational background, and I can assure you that the 23 years
that I have spent with the district have been very interesting
and very educational. And I think we have done a good job. I
think we have worked very hard.
I can go back to 1982 and remember as a rookie turning over
a plan to the board, we called it a year 2000 plan, and what we
were trying to do back in 1982 was to try to figure out what in
the world was going to happen to the El Paso County Water
Improvement District Number 1 by the year 2000. And of course,
the main thing there was the population. You know, what's the
population going to do?
Well, here we are, it is 2001. I go back and I take a look
at that little plan and you know, the darn thing worked pretty
good. It was not great, but it worked pretty good. And so one
of the things that we realized back in 1982 was the fact that
the population was growing, and that the city did sit in the
center of the irrigation district, and what we were going to
try to do?
We fumbled around and stammered around and kind of fell
down a few times and got up a few times. As a matter of fact,
in 1985 we tried to enlarge our district to take in Hudspeth
County, which is a small irrigation district, 18,000 acres,
small irrigation district south of us, realizing that, yes,
there was going to be the need for water for municipal
purposes, but it was going to be several decades to come.
Well, we got mashed pretty good in that election. Those
elections are pretty difficult. We got beat 6 to 1. And what
happened was the city of El Paso stood up and said, no, you are
not going to send our irrigation water, or our future drinking
water, to Hudspeth County for drinking--or for irrigation. And
so, I mean, that was kind of the--the light kind of came on at
that point in time, we said, well, you know, they have a point.
And from that point forward, I think that we started doing
a lot of things realizing that we had to start developing some
kind of a plan of action to involve the municipal use of water.
You look back in history, 100 years ago there were a handful of
people that went to the Federal Government and said we need to
capture some water so we can farm these fertile grounds in
southern New Mexico and west Texas. And that handful of people
asked--I am sure they asked city of El Paso--I have not talked
to any of them lately--but I am sure they asked the city of El
Paso to be part of that. And I am sure city of El Paso felt
that they had enough groundwater to where they did not have to
be a part of that.
These people agreed to have their lands taxed. I mean, that
is a big step. But that is looking into the future and what
your future is all about. As we progressed and moved along and
became a part of the Rio Grande Project, there were numerous
contracts. And every one of those contracts, if you take and
sit down and look at every one of those contracts, it is for
the betterment as we go along.
In 1941, there was a contract between the city of El Paso,
El Paso County Water Improvement District, and the Bureau of
Reclamation that allowed for the city of El Paso to purchase
2000 acres of water right land and to utilize that water for
municipal purposes, knowing that the water was tied to the land
and keeping some semblance of control over the water making
sure that it was tied to the land. And so the allotment to that
land would go to the city of El Paso for municipal purposes.
The city of El Paso built a water treatment plant in, I
think, 1951, 1953 somewhere in there, and did utilize that
water.
Again in 1962, there was another contract that allowed for
the City of El Paso to lease the rights to water off of water
right lands. So if someone like Edd Fifer, I have three acres
in the lower valley, and I cannot receive irrigation water,
because it would involve a bunch of legal action for me to make
people open the ditch to get the water to me. In turn, what I
do is I lease my rights to water to the Public Service Board.
So Edd Fifer, as an individual, provides 4 million acre-feet of
water a year to the Public Service Board. They, in turn, pay my
taxes.
And so that was a way of working into that municipal thing.
But if you will stop and think about that, that continues to be
tied to the water right acre. I have the three acres.
Everything is tied to that water right acre. So whatever that
water right acre receives in an allotment is what the Public
Service Board receives.
It has only been until recently that the city of El Paso
and the Lower Valley Water District, two municipal users in our
area, have decided that they need water in bulk, or in larger
quantities, that they do not want to go to these individual
landowners. The vehicle is still there. If they want to do it,
they can still do it. But those small landowners, it takes some
time to go there and sit down with them and convince them that
they need to turn their water over to the city. So they wanted
their water in bulk.
When we went back and took a look at how that was going to
occur, we sat down and negotiated some contracts, and with the
Bureau of Reclamation, we negotiated the first conversion
contract. And of course, this is what Gary says. Gary's
attitude towards this--or excuse me, Elephant Butte Irrigation
District's attitude toward this and El Paso's are different. I
mean, we are just as different as can be.
And we felt like we wanted to convert irrigation water to
municipal, recreational, environmental, whatever other
beneficial uses there were. So we negotiated the first of its
kind conversion contract. And these are some of the things we
have been doing in the background and trying to get
accomplished, so that whenever it did come time for us to
provide a bulk water supply, then perhaps we could do that.
That contract was completed in March 1996. After the
conversion contract--the conversion contract was between the
Federal Government, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the
irrigation district, and it simply stated that you can convert
irrigation water to municipal uses. After that, you have to go
to your third-party contractors and do a third-party generic
contract. And in that, we have those two contracts completed,
one with the Public Service Board and one with the Lower Valley
Water District. Those are both completed. They are the only
ones of their kind in the Western United States.
And then following that you do the nuts-and-bolts thing,
which is the third-party implementing contract, the nuts and
bolts being the price and the term and all of these situations.
And we now have that completed with the Public Service Board,
and we are working on an implementing contract with the Lower
Valley Water District right now. I think it will be finished
hopefully by the end of the year.
So we have taken that route and we have gone that route as
a way of providing water for municipal use. We have not sat on
our hands. We have not gone out and hidden. We are not being
negative. I think we are trying to get something done here. But
there are so many rules and regulations, there are so many
contracts, and there are so many ways that we have to do
things, we are trying to work within the system and trying to
get that accomplished.
We have taken some blasting by the Public Service Board in
the newspapers, but that is not the place you negotiate is in
the news media. You get down and you work hard and you
negotiate contracts and you get the thing accomplished. Yes, we
would like to start all over again.
I sometimes wish that we were in the shoes of Elephant
Butte Irrigation District and the city of Las Cruces because
they are kind of starting from the beginning here. It is kind
of neat to see how it is all working out for them. If they have
picked up anything from us whatsoever, I think that is
terrific. If they have not, then I am sorry that they have not.
But when you really get down to it, I think we have all worked
very, very hard to get where we are at today.
The city of El Paso receives 48,000 under these 1941 and
1962 contracts, 48,000 acre-feet of water, and this newest
contract, this implementing contract, approximately 28,000
acre-feet of water. So you can kind of see we are moving along.
What do we do from here on out? The El Paso County Water
Improvement District really does not have any water. The only
water that--every bit of the water that we get on allotment
goes to our landowners. Our landowners are the beneficial
owners of that water. The district does not have any water. The
only time the district might have any water is when our
landowners all are assured this they are going to receive their
annual allotment.
Now, can we create new water sources above that? Yes, I
think we can, and I think John hit it on the head a while ago
when he talked in terms of concrete lining. That is something
that we all need to do, we all need to take a look at. That
conserves water in our region. I do not know about Elephant
Butte Irrigation District. I only now know about El Paso County
Water Improvement District.
If we were to go in and concrete line canals, yes, we can
conserve water. The issue of who pays for those concrete canals
comes up. We have very close to 600 linear miles of system
within the County of El Paso. If you go in and you start
concrete lining canals, your cost is going to be in the
neighborhood of a million dollars a mile. How much water does
that conserve? What you have to do is you have to turn around
and say, okay, if it conserves X amount of water, divide the
million by X amount of water, and whatever the number comes up
is the price that has got to be paid.
That is what we have done recently on a contract that we
have had with the Public Service Board. And it is very
difficult for me to go to my constituency and say, you are
going to pay for these concrete-lined canals and we are going
to give the water to El Paso, because you know what the answer
is there. The answer in Washington or New Mexico or Texas, it
is all the same, go to hell. We are not going to do that. And
so that is basically where it all comes from.
Now, terms and how long these contracts are, it is all,
like I say, it is very interesting to negotiate these things.
And we all have our story to tell. There is no doubt about
that. I think the important thing, Senator, is that when you
look at the people sitting in this room, the people sitting at
this table, we all enjoy one another. We all will work
together. We are not always going to hug and kiss, but I can
assure you that we are going to work together. And I think we
have done that in a big way and I think we are going to
continue to do that in a big way.
The district that I work for wants to work with everybody
else, but we just do not want to give the ship completely away.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fifer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Edd Fifer, General Manager, El Paso County Water
Improvement District #1
INTRODUCTION
Hello. My name is Edd Fifer. I am proud to be the General Manager
of the El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 and have been for
the past 23 years. The El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 is
unique in that it has 34,946 accounts representing 69,010 water right
acres. In excess of 31,500 accounts are less than 2.00 acres in size
but the total land represented by those 31,500 accounts is
approximately 12,718 acres or 19% of the total 69,010 water right acres
located inside the boundaries of the El Paso County Water Improvement
District #1. The El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 has
exercised strong conservation efforts over the 20 years of its
operation and maintenance responsibilities by maintaining a 65 to 74%
efficiency rate over the last 15 years. This is accomplished by
metering of all farm tract irrigations (2.O acres and above) every time
the lands are irrigated, implementing of an annual water budget, and a
support by the Board of Directors to conserve precious water supplies
by stringent water operational policies practiced on a daily basis.
The El Paso County Water Improvement District #1 (EPCWID #1) is a
political subdivision of the State of Texas established in 1917 under
the Texas Constitution. EPCWID #1 is one of the three water users in
the Rio Grande Federal Reclamation Project and receives its annual
surface water allotment via the Rio Grande from Elephant Butte and
Caballo Reservoirs as well as return flow entering the Rio Grande below
Caballo Reservoir. Approximately 41% of EPCWID #1's annual allotment is
return flow from New Mexico agriculture drains as well as discharges of
sewage effluent from facilities along the Rio Grande north of the
greater El Paso area.
The EPCWID #1 took over operations and maintenance of the
irrigation drainage system in El Paso County from the Bureau of
Reclamation in 1981 by Contract #0-07-54-X0904. In 1996, after a long
legislative effort and 21 years after the EPCWID #1 repaid the Bureau
of Reclamation for construction of the irrigation distribution and
drainage system, the Bureau conveyed to EPCWID #1 by special warranty
deed the irrigation facilities in El Paso County.
The present and the future need for water was and is dependent on
population growth and weather. The total dependence on surface water
supplies could be a very dangerous municipal water path to take based
on the historical water supply patterns in the Rio Grande Project over
the existence of the Project. In 1982, EPCWID #1 prepared a Year 2000
Plan realizing that the municipal needs for water were growing due to
the only factor which was certain to occur by the Year 2000: increased
populations in the greater El Paso area. The same holds true for
southern New Mexico and northern Mexico. With the increase in
population, municipal water had to become more and more important. That
is why we are here today.
ADDRESSING FUTURE WATER NEEDS
In the very early 1900's, the City of El Paso had the opportunity
to become a water user in the Rio Grande Federal Reclamation Project.
The City of El Paso chose not to subject their lands to water right
taxation, believing they had sufficient groundwater supplies.
A handful of landowners in both southern New Mexico and far west
Texas agreed to have their lands taxed and signed contracts with the
Federal government for the development of the Rio Grande Federal
Reclamation Project. The point being raised is that future water needs
were addressed in the early 1900's, and today we see the results of
that major effort on the part of landowners who wished to farm their
land and address their future water needs by contracting with the
Federal Government for an irrigation system and dam to collect the
surface water flowing down the Rio Grande.
The EPCWID #1 and the Bureau of Reclamation addressed future water
needs every time they entered into a contract. In 1941, the Bureau of
Reclamation and EPCWID #1 signed a contract with the City of El Paso to
provide for a municipal surface water supply by allowing the City of El
Paso to purchase 2,000 acres of water right lands and use the annual
allotment for those acreages up to 3.5 acre-feet per acre. Again, in
1962, the Bureau and EPCWID #1 signed another contract with the City of
El Paso allowing the City to seek surface water assignments from owners
of water right lands.
More recently, in 1988, EPCWID #1 and the Bureau of Reclamation
signed a contract with the Lower Valley Water District allowing the
LVWD to seek surface water assignments from the owners of water right
lands located within the LVWD boundaries. This contract helped the
fledgling municipal water district to attain much-needed water supplies
for its constituents located outside the El Paso City limits on the
east side of El Paso.
In the last four to five years, the fears of running out of water
have haunted the municipal suppliers of water. The contracts which
allowed for municipal water entities to seek surface water allotments
from water right lands located in the boundaries of EPCWID #1 was not
enough. Larger quantities of water became the desire of municipal
entities. Prior to 1996, every drop of surface water secured by the
municipal utilities was linked to a specific parcel of land. After
1996, municipal interests urged the EPCWID #1 to ``sell'' them larger
quantities of surface water for municipal needs.
The EPCWID #1 had no surface water to sell in large quantities. The
water right landowners are the beneficial owners of the surface water,
and EPCWID #1 divided the annual allotment received from the Bureau of
Reclamation among every landowner on a per-acre basis. If the EPCWID #1
were to ever have any surface irrigation water to sell it would have to
come from conserved water remaining after each and every water right
acre (69,010) inside EPCWID #1's boundaries received their fair and
equitable annual allotment on a per-acre basis. The City of El Paso
benefited from this allotment procedure because under its water supply
contract, it also received an annual water allotment for lands it
owned.
In March 1996, the EPCWID #1 signed a conversion contract--the
first of its kind--with the Bureau of Reclamation. The conversion
contract provided for the ``conversion'' of agricultural irrigation
water to water for other beneficial uses such as municipal, industrial,
recreational and environmental. After signing the conversion contract,
the EPCWID #1 entered into two ``third-party contracts,'' one with City
of El Paso and the other with the Lower Valley Water District (LVWD).
Those two contracts--the only contracts of their kind in the entire
western United States--allow for the two entities to convert irrigation
water to municipal purposes. But before they can purchase water for
municipal purposes, each entity must enter into an ``implementing
contract,'' which specifies the quantity, price and other terms of the
sale. Each implementing contract is subject to satisfying the
requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Today,
the EPCWID #1 has a third-party implementing contract with the City of
El Paso and expects to negotiate an implementing contract with the LVWD
in the very near future.
EPCWID #1 is attempting to address the future water needs of the
surrounding area. Future surface water supplies will have to come from
the concrete-lining of canals or from the water right landowners
through forbearance contracts whereby the landowner sells his or her
annual allotment of surface water to approved third-party contractor
for an agreed price. The Board of Directors of EPCWID #1 have enacted a
policy regarding Forbearance Contracts and a form forbearance contract
will be provided for the EPCWID #1 landowners to negotiate price, term
and quantities of water.
EPCWID #1 welcomes the importation of water for municipal needs. If
the municipal needs exceed the sustainable supply provided by the Rio
Grande, the EPCWID #1 supports the importation of water from other
sources. If municipal interests in the greater El Paso area can
contract for ground or surface water in New Mexico, EPCWID #1 supports
those efforts.
ARISING ISSUES
EPCWID #1 will face numerous critical issues if municipal interests
only wish to furnish large populations with an endless supply of water.
Nevertheless, EPCWID #1 has moved in a positive direction in providing
additional surface water for municipal use. The 1996 Conversion
Contract allows for irrigation water to be converted not only for
municipal needs, but also other beneficial needs such as recreation and
environmental. If a recreational or environmental entity were to seek
water supplies from the EPCWID #1 as an approved third party
contractor, the EPCWID #1 would work to negotiate a third-party as well
as a third-party implementing contract. Although a contract would
reduce the amount of surface water available in the future for
municipal interests.
Loss of water quality is a major disadvantage for EPCWID #1 to
provide municipal interest with surface water supplies delivered at
their water treatment plants. As more and more Rio Grande water goes
toward municipal use, particularly in New Mexico, an increasing
percentage of the water received by EPCWID #1 will consist of effluent
discharges. Already a large portion of the Project water received by
EPCWID #1 consists of agriculture return flows which is water that has
been used to irrigate and is returned to the irrigation system through
drainage. This return flow degrades the water quality, as does effluent
discharged from water treatment plants operated along the Rio Grande.
EPCWID #1 remains concerned that its water will be further degraded as
the population of southern New Mexico grows.
Agriculture water efficiencies likely will be adversely affected
when the water right landowners enter into forbearance agreements to
sell their allotment water. This activity would reduce the number of
water right acres irrigating in specific areas. Delivery efficiencies
which are achieved today will not be operationally possible; therefore,
overall less surface water will be available for water right landowners
who do irrigate.
CONCLUSION
EPCWID #1 has always realized the need for water both agricultural
as well as for municipal purposes. History shows that surface
irrigation water has been made available to satisfy municipal needs.
Numerous contracts have been negotiated and signed allowing for use of
irrigation water for other beneficial uses. EPCWID #1 has for years
strived to conserve this precious natural resource and will continue to
do in the future so that a long range plan of action for all parties in
need can be pursued.
In closing, I would like to thank the Chairman, Senator Bingaman,
for holding this hearing. As you may know, Senator Bingaman was born in
El Paso, and I have heard that he spent a fair amount of time attending
movies at the old Plaza Theater. Many of us in my area of Texas
consider you to be our Senator too.
Thanks again for allowing me to participate today and remember
``Irrigation Water is not for Wasting!''
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Thanks to all of you.
Let me ask a few questions here before we conclude this panel.
Let me start, I guess I am just unclear. I am trying to
understand all this. John, you make some statements here in
your testimony that I am just not clear on.
You say that the farmers who might welcome the opportunity
to periodically sell their irrigation water to municipalities
are prohibited from doing so by the Bureau of Reclamation and
the irrigation districts. I assume you mean by ``selling,'' you
mean also leasing?
Mr. Burkstaller. I mean basically the big potential source
of water at this point that I am sure Edd agrees with is
forbearance. If they got a full allotment year, maybe they can
sell a portion of their water to us and forbear using it.
The Chairman. How does that square with what Edd is just
talking about there? Your statement is that the irrigation
districts are prohibiting people like Edd from making their
water available for municipal use.
Mr. Burkstaller. In our eyes, the Bureau and the irrigation
districts are making it too complicated and putting too many
restrictions on the process for us to use forbearance as a
dependable supply. And we would like to be included in the
process and have input to the program so that we can assure
that whatever comes out of it is a usable water source.
The Chairman. So that what Edd has done with his three
acres is not useful to you.
Mr. Burkstaller. Edd is just starting to be fair. And we
need to work together and we feel like we are not working
together.
The Chairman. But now, let me try to understand, also, and
also in the New Mexico side in Elephant Butte Irrigation
District. What are the obstacles that exist to an individual
farmer who has certain water rights in this irrigation
district? If that farmer would want to go ahead and provide
those, lease on a temporary basis, on a year-by-year basis,
make that available to the city, that is not permitted by the
Elephant Butte Irrigation District. Is that correct?
Mr. Esslinger. Well, Senator, what the problem is, is the
farmer is given an allotment every year based upon what is in
storage. However, as far as determining what his water right
is, that is a process that has to be perfected by the stream
adjudication process. And that has to affect everyone, whether
you are a groundwater pumper or a surface water user or both.
And so it is real difficult for a farmer at this point to,
without some uncertainty, to establish a lease with a city
supplier not knowing for sure if he can use his groundwater as
a supplement to whatever he leases as a surface supply to
sustain his crop. And all of that has to be worked out through
the stream adjudication process.
We believe that through our municipal water users policy,
that what we are envisioning is that as a city grows or our
community grows and acquires irrigation land that had a water
right on it, well, then that water right stays appurtenant to
the land, and the land that is consumed by the city would then
be able to acquire that surface water right in the future for
its surface water treatment plant.
Right now, we just do not have the mechanism in place, and
there is an uncertainty by every farmer and every groundwater
user of what they own as a right to sell.
The Chairman. I can understand that they do not have an
adjudication yet completed. But what if I am an irrigator, I
have a farm, and I am advised by the Elephant Butte Irrigation
District that I have a certain allotment for this year based on
how much water is going to be released, and I decide I would
just as soon go ahead and lease that water or provide it or
sell it or do something with it this year instead of planting
my crop, I do not have that option?
Mr. Esslinger. What you do have is an option within the
irrigation district to allow another farmer to transfer your
water to his land. Internally, we have been doing that since
the inception of the State, transferring the water between
agricultural users. And so if you, for whatever reason, did not
want to farm, there are farmers waiting to acquire that water
right. In fact, we have a waiting list of close to 500 acres of
farmers who have perfected and have cleared land waiting to get
water-righted land classified.
And so what has happened in the past is if the city
acquired--or if a farmer sold a 20-acre parcel, we would
transfer that 20-acre parcel to a farmer on the waiting list,
because we have room within our district to grow as a farming
community. We are not at the same position that El Paso is in,
where they are squeezed between the river and their mountain
range. We have in our project boundaries 133,000 acres of
project land. We have 90,640 acres of irrigatable water-righted
land. What we have been doing over the past is just
transferring the water from a subdivision back to a farmer who
needs it.
Now the point is as the city has approached us, they would
like to acquire that water for future use. And what they are
doing is they are putting it in our conservation pool for our
farmers to continue to use the water as they acquire the land.
And that is something that was a basis of these statutes that
we got legislative action on.
The Chairman. Let me just understand. The distinction that
I am hearing between what you are doing and what they are doing
in El Paso is that in the case of El Paso, at least there is,
although there are complaints about all the paperwork and
obstacles that have been thrown up, at least there is the
possibility of an individual water owner, water rights owner
down there in El Paso, a person who has some rights, going
ahead and transferring those to the city or leasing them to the
city for municipal use.
And here in the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, that
option does not exist for an individual because the
individual's water rights have not yet been established. And
the district will not allow the allocation of water to be
transferred out of agricultural use by an individual.
Mr. Esslinger. That is correct, because at the present
time, we still have all of our water being used for
agricultural purposes.
The Chairman. But the district itself is entering into a
contract with the city which will allow the district to
transfer it out of agricultural use to municipal use, although
the individuals who get the allotment would not have that
option.
Mr. Esslinger. No, sir, Senator. What this water users
policy does is it allows for, first of all, the city to be able
to lease water from our district. But it also gives the
opportunity for the city to go outside and also have the
opportunity to lease water from individual farmers. There is
two components of the policy, and it is attached in my
testimony, which allows for the city, as they acquire land, to
actually receive that as part of their water-righted acreage.
And then the second component is for them to go out and by
the forbearance, also be able to purchase or lease water on an
annual basis from the farmers.
We believe that that process cannot happen yet because
there is no surface water treatment plant in place for the
water to go to. So the city is not interested in purchasing
water or buying farms at this time because it would be a costly
venture for them with no place to go. So all they are doing now
is just grabbing what they are acquiring through their
expansion of their city limits and allowing that water, the
first set of water, it is kind of a base for them to go and
bind for later on to establish a surface water treatment need.
So they are trying to establish a base allotment right now of
surface water right.
Have I confused you?
The Chairman. Yes, pretty much. Let me ask about the Bureau
of Reclamation. John, in your testimony you cite the fact that
the Bureau of Reclamation has prohibited this transfer or this
use of irrigation water for municipalities. What is the
Bureau's role? How do they accomplish that prohibition?
Mr. Burkstaller. I think, basically, we had a number of
agreements with El Paso County Number 1 that the Bureau was not
a party to. And when it came time to negotiate for more water
at the new municipal price, the district went back and looked
at all those and kind of wanted the Bureau of Reclamation on
board to approve them. And technically, the Bureau feels that
all agreements have to be co-signed by the Bureau. They have to
be between the district, the bureau, and the other potential
user.
In the process, we lost quite a bit of water by
reinterpretation of what the contracts allowed. And when we
negotiated our recent implementing agreement, we got it back
again for $200 an acre-foot as opposed to the 15 or so that we
paid in the past. But we did not get all of it back. Some of it
we have lost indefinitely. So we feel that there was kind of a
severe pro-irrigation-district interpretation of all the issues
that came up in the process of negotiating this implementation
agreement.
The Chairman. And I can understand there is a disagreement
there as to how it was done. But the Bureau of Reclamation does
not have a policy of not approving these uses or these efforts
to use irrigation water for municipal use. I mean, they have no
reason to prohibit that that I am aware of.
Mr. Burkstaller. They have no formal policy, that is for
sure, yes.
The Chairman. Let me ask, it strikes me we are having this
whole discussion that we are having this morning and virtually
nothing said about what is going on on the other side of the
river, except that at one point there are 2 million people in
Juarez and they are out of water, or nearly out of water. And
they're taking into account the problems on one side versus the
other or the actions on one side versus other in moving ahead.
Again, John, do you have any involvement with the city of
Juarez as to their water needs or their projections for water
needs, or is that just sort of in a different category that you
do not have to concern yourself with?
Mr. Burkstaller. Until recently, we have kind of kept track
of how much of the Hueco Bolson they are using because we
naturally have an interest. And even though they have a lower
per capita consumption, their population has grown so much that
they withdraw quite a bit more from the aquifer now than we do.
Based on that and a number of issues, we realized the need
to go into regional planning, and we do have a planning group
now that includes representatives from Dona Ana County, El
Paso, the Juntas, the utility in Juarez, and we have embarked
on a program to identify options that might be beneficial
collectively for water treatment and conversion of some of the
Juarez ag water to M&I uses and so on.
So we are actively involved in that process. We do not
really have a plan at this point, but we have embarked on
trying to find one.
The Chairman. One of the points that we discussed with Mr.
Wood in the previous panel was that there is no real joint
effort to analyze the water resources and make projections as
to future need and future uses. Is that your assessment as
well, that we really do not have anything that both the Mexican
officials and the folks on our side are involved in that people
have confidence in?
Mr. Burkstaller. I think both sides have made their own
projections, but we do not necessarily agree on all of the
issues. One example is they dispute some of the claims we have
made about how fast they will exhaust the potable water in the
Hueco Bolson. They think it will last longer than we do, and so
on. And there are a number of kind of political constraints and
what their national government allows and so on.
But I think all the parties individually are projecting the
water resource, just that we do not have any overarching----
The Chairman. There is no joint effort to project the water
resource.
Mr. Burkstaller. To impose agreement to the various parties
involved.
The Chairman. Or to even cooperate in the development of
data and information with which to make projections.
Mr. Burkstaller. There has been some limited cooperation, I
would say. The USGS has modeled the Hueco on both sides of the
border, but there are disputes in Mexico about whether or not
they did an accurate job in the Mexico portion. I think there
is a level of mistrust in the numbers that come from various
sources
The Chairman. Edd, did you have any involvement in any of
this cross-border?
Mr. Fifer. No, sir, we have not. There is a very
interesting aspect to this whole thing, though. In the process
of converting water from agriculture or irrigation to
municipal, we are creating markets for that water. And at the
present time, there has been no discussions about whether or
not Mexico can participate in those markets or not.
This is going to become very interesting, and I think this
is a decision that is going to have to be made perhaps by the
Bureau of Reclamation, also, or by the U.S. Government, whether
or not that can be done. That would really open things up for
the landowner who owns the water and who has the right to
forbear that water.
I know in our district, the owner has the right to forbear.
That would create a tremendous market. But that would also
create a water shortage, I think, on the U.S. side. Everything
that we have looked at from a municipal standpoint, we feel
like we can work very closely with the Public Service Board, El
Paso Water Utilities, Lower Valley Water District, but we are a
little bit concerned about going beyond those things.
We do not have a surplus amount of water. I know we
exercise conservation continuously. We do a water budget every
year. We set efficiency marks. My board of directors tells me
that I have to attain a certain efficiency, and if I do not, I
get my hand spanked pretty good over the deal. So I think there
is just a lot of things that we do to conserve water. You
really do not know how much water you have until the year ends
for you because you have these thousands and thousands of
irrigations that are going on.
I just think that there is an aspect there that maybe--I do
not know, maybe somebody is hiding or whatever. But I think
that there is a possible market in Mexico for water, for
surface water.
The Chairman. Mayor Smith.
Mr. Smith. Senator, just very quickly, I hear comments
about Federal and irrigation districts trying to work together.
As you can tell, it has taken us literally years to get to this
point. And as mayor, I can tell you something that we have done
within the region and I guess we can act a lot more
spontaneously, much more quickly.
As you well know, there have been new elections in El Paso
and Juarez and there are new mayors on the border. I have been
able to--talking about sustainable projects--I have been able
to sustain the mayorship here for about 10 years. But over the
past 10 years, we have worked collaboratively as three
communities, not--obviously, we cannot make decisions dealing
with water. But what we have been able to do in several
different areas is to bring together and take the initiative to
essentially lead the people in the different communities to
come together to understand the issue, first of all. And I
think we went a long ways in the past several years with the
previous two mayors in El Paso and Juarez.
And we have a meeting set up this coming week in El Paso.
For the first time the two new elected mayors and myself will
be getting together to talk about the issues paramount to the
region. And we most definitely think Las Cruces is part of the
major region. Water is one of those issues. Obviously,
transportation issues is going to be a second issue. Border
crossing issues always are on the front plate.
But I can tell you since it takes a Federal system quite
some time to go through all of the hoops and whatnot to get the
process moving, I think what we are attempting to do, and
particularly with the three mayors, is to surface the issue, no
pun intended, to surface the issue of the water as it relates
to Juarez and maybe to initiate some new processes that we have
not even thought about.
But if anybody thinks that we can talk independently just
as Texas and New Mexico and not bring in the Mexican
connection, we are never going to be resolving the issue of
water. Which in political elections, that is always the prima
donna, that is the red flag, but after elections, it kind of
wanes. The good news is I think that we have shown that if you
continue to pursue the issues with some basis, scientific
information with the quality of the water, the quantity of
water, and if you plug in what Dr. Peach gave us, those
wonderful statistics, then we begin to understand that we just
cannot sit around and see which one of the entities is going to
try to take the lead.
So we are going to continue to push that. And hopefully,
once we have the ideas in place, we will be visiting with you.
Because we have already spoken in general terms independently,
not the three of us collectively, of bringing in the Federal
delegation on the Mexican side truly to work hand-in-hand with
the United States side to begin to resolve this issue, because
we are not going to be able to do it on a local issue. We are
clearly going to have to have the support and understanding on
the Federal level, and I think that is precisely what this
hearing you have called for should go a long way in doing.
The Chairman. Thank you all very much. I think it has been
useful testimony and I appreciate it. We will try to follow up
on some of these suggestions, and see if we can be of help.
Let us take about a 5-minute break and then we will hear
from the State engineer.
[A short recess was had.]
The Chairman. Let us get started again here. Our final
witness this morning is going to be Tom Turney, who is the New
Mexico State engineer. He is going to give us his perspective
on some of these same issues we have been talking about so far
this morning. And we appreciate you being here very much. Go
right ahead.
STATEMENT OF TOM TURNEY, STATE ENGINEER, STATE OF NEW MEXICO
Mr. Turney. Well, thank you. Senator Bingaman has asked me
to speak today to discuss water supply issues facing the
southern New Mexico border region. I am happy to do so.
The recent 2000 census confirmed that the State of New
Mexico is growing. Among Western States, New Mexico now ranks
eighth in growth. New Mexico is basically a desert. New Mexico
water resources for people to use are finite. In a desert, not
everyone can have all the water they want.
This basic principle was recognized 400 years ago when the
Spanish government settled New Mexico. This concept is
reflected in the State constitution, which embodies a prior
appropriation system of water administration. As the State
grows and water becomes more and more scarce, water
availability will ultimately define the future of New Mexico.
New Mexico is experiencing a period of rapid growth. Its
population over the past four decades has almost doubled. The
Denver Post recently carried a projection on its front page
that New Mexico's population will grow by almost 85 percent
over the next 50 years. Heavy growth is projected for the city
of Las Cruces and Dona Ana County. These numbers paint a
dramatic change in this area. It is important that the State
understand that it needs to work with this area, and that there
is something we can do while taking into consideration existing
State water laws.
New Mexico is a rural State. There is much agriculture
along its rivers. In the southern part of the State, water
rights for the most part are attached to farmlands. Under State
law, the owner of a land can sever the water right from his
lands and transfer it to other lands or, alternately, the owner
can transfer the rights for other purposes without losing the
priority of that right.
Water right holders who wish to transfer their right to
another parcel of irrigated land or who wish to transfer their
water right to another such use, such as a municipal or
industrial use, must apply to my office for approval of the
transfer. We only transfer actual water rights, that is, water
that is actually put to beneficial use. State engineer will not
transfer a claim to water where there has not been water put to
beneficial use.
State law allows water rights to be leased as well as
purchased. A water right may be leased for 40 years to
municipalities, counties, State universities, public utilities
supplying water to municipalities and counties, and member-
owned community water systems.
The rapid growth in this region will result in water supply
pressures in the area. My office has taken major steps toward
addressing the water supply in this area. 30 years ago the
lands from Las Cruces to El Paso were basically rural. Now,
there is an infill of homes and businesses almost continually
along this corridor.
Because of this substantial growth, my office began a major
adjudication of water rights along the Rio Grande south from
Elephant Butte to the New Mexico-Texas State line. An
adjudication is similar to what is called a quiet title suit
for a piece of commercial or residential property. In an
adjudication suit, a court defines the elements of a water
right, who is the owner, what is the amount of the right, what
is the priority of the right, and finally, what is the purpose,
place of use, and the point of diversion of that right.
Adjudications are key to providing a viable water market in
this area. An adjudication provides certainty about the nature
and the extent of water rights because they are judicially
determined.
As challenges to New Mexico's water supply increase and
more and more demand for new water sources arise from entities
such as municipalities and commercial interests, only those
rights that have been adjudicated will be marketable at low
risk to the purchaser. Adjudicating New Mexico's water rights
is essential to protect New Mexico water and will allow for
orderly development.
In 1997, we began to conduct a comprehensive hydrographic
survey of the lower Rio Grande, an area that begins below
Elephant Butte Reservoir. The hydrographic survey for the
entire Rio Grande was completed earlier this year.
In late 1997, we began the adjudication of water rights in
a State court proceeding. The first step is to serve what we
call an offer of judgment on each water right claimant. The
offer of judgment is a settlement offer that describes the
State's position based on hydrographic survey of what the water
rights claimant and entitlement is. The lower Rio Grande
adjudication contains approximately 13,000 water right claims.
This may grow up to about 25,000 claims as we work forward.
To date, about 3000 offers of judgment have been mailed.
Many of these offers are being negotiated or litigated. The
result is a water right that is defined by court order. The
lower Rio Grande adjudication is necessary for the development
of an efficient water market in this area. This market is
essential to the economic future of the region. Every drop of
water for new use has to come from existing uses or from water
conservation. The days of free or cheap water are probably
past. But with completion of the adjudication, there will be
substantial water available in the marketplace.
My office is exploring ways to streamline the permit
application process so that water rights can be moved more
quickly or transferred to new uses. This includes ways to
expedite transfer processes so that entities like the city of
Las Cruces and Dona Ana County can more rapidly transfer
agricultural water to municipal uses. We recognize what Mayor
Ruben Smith was talking about this morning, of waiting almost
20 years for a decision is no longer acceptable. Cities do need
certainty.
With respect to the city of Las Cruces's immediate water
supply concerns, I did promise the mayor that I would have the
decision made by the end of this year. He said this morning he
would like to get that a little faster, and I hope we can
accommodate that. My staff has completed a preliminary review
and it looks like we can possibly approve for immediate use a
substantial amount of water from the Jornada area.
There is a substantial amount of proposed industrial and
residential development in the border region, in particular, in
the city of Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, and in the areas
around the Santa Teresa border crossing.
In order to present you a complete picture of groundwater
supply issues in that region, it is necessary first to
understand the relationships between surface and groundwater.
There is a basic rule of Mother Nature relating to hydrologic
reality in a basin that has a surface stream connected with an
underground water basin. That is, for every gallon of water
pumped from a well, ultimately, there is one less gallon of
water flowing in a nearby river.
This reality directly impacts groundwater development in
the reach from Elephant Butte Dam down to the Mexico-New Mexico
border. Since no new appropriations of surface water are
allowed on this stretch of the river, any new groundwater
withdrawals that affect or deplete the surface flow of the Rio
Grande must be fully offset by retiring surface water rights.
Because the primary aquifer in the region is hydrologically
connected to the Rio Grande, groundwater pumping in this
aquifer ultimately will result in diminishment of the surface
flows of the Rio Grande. It is likely that surface water rights
will have to be acquired to offset any new groundwater
withdrawals in the Santa Teresa area.
The State of New Mexico, by necessity, must begin to
actively manage its water resources. State law requires that I
must administer water rights in accordance with the State's
constitution, which says that a senior water right is a better
right. In the lower Rio Grande, the State will have to curtail
junior rights in times of shortage or as required to satisfy
interstate obligations.
With few exceptions, the water rights with the earliest
priority in the basin are the surface water rights of the
irrigators within the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. New
Mexico State University and the city of Las Cruces may further
have valid senior water right claims. They may be senior water
right holders.
Nearly all groundwater claims in the lower Rio Grande,
including the claims in the immediate border area around Santa
Teresa, are considerably junior to the senior water rights of
these three entities. Even if the groundwater claimants in this
border area obtain orders from the water right adjudication
court recognizing water rights in the full amount of their
claims, these priorities of these rights will, in all
likelihood, be junior by decades to the more senior water
rights in the basin. Such junior water rights will be subject
to curtailment if administration of priorities is ever required
in this basin. This hydrologic reality must be considered when
policymakers assess the long-term dependability of the water
supply in the border region.
In addition to internal challenges, New Mexico is facing a
number of outside challenges to the region's water supply. In
1997 the United States filed a lawsuit in Federal district
court claiming title to all the waters in the lower Rio Grande.
My office vigorously fought the lawsuit, and in August 2000 the
Federal district court dismissed this lawsuit. This dismissal
is currently being appealed by the United States and the El
Paso Public Service Board.
Additional challenges come from Texas entities and the
State of Texas. Hunt Building Corporation, a Texas entity,
recently declared an intent to divert up to 45,000 acre-feet of
groundwater from the Salt Basin, which lies in New Mexico's
southern Otero County just north of Dell City, Texas. Hunt
Building Corporation stated that the water would be used, in
part, for municipal purposes within El Paso County.
El Paso has on previous occasions made it clear that it
intends to find ways to export water from New Mexico. I do want
to be very clear that any exports by Texas entities can occur,
but they must be through compliance with New Mexico's export
statutes, which requires the State engineer to determine the
withdrawal and transportation of water outside the State will
not impair existing water rights and not be contrary to
conservation or the public welfare of the State.
Additionally, the State engineer must consider if there are
any shortages in New Mexico and whether any sources of water
are available--any other sources of water are available to the
applicant.
Some of the people in the Salt Basin have suggested the
construction of a pipeline from the Salt Basin to Santa Teresa
area. The cost of such a pipeline has been estimated to be in
the neighborhood of $60 million. Such a pipeline may, indeed,
be possible, but would involve much more consideration. As
such, recent actions by the State of Texas, the Texas
legislature has appropriated in May of this year $6.2 million
for vigorously representing Texas interests for water right
litigation in the State of New Mexico in the lower Rio Grande.
At issue will be the Rio Grande Compact.
It is clear that Texas wants additional quantities of water
to provide for the growing needs of the El Paso region. El Paso
further wants better quality water so it can more inexpensively
treat Rio Grande surface water in its municipal water treatment
plants. The State of New Mexico has entered into preliminary
discussion with the State of Texas over this issue. Per the New
Mexico attorney general, all these discussions will be held
under an umbrella of confidentiality.
There are international threats to the waters of the Rio
Grande. Mexico is in the process of developing a Conejo
wellfield across the border from the Santa Teresa area to
ultimately divert approximately 12,000 acre-feet per year of
water from the Mesilla Bolson. This is the same aquifer that
underlies the Mesilla Valley in New Mexico. It is likely that
any withdrawals by Mexico from the Mesilla Bolson will directly
affect the surface water supply of the Rio Grande Project and
make it more difficult for New Mexico to meet its delivery
obligations to Texas under the Rio Grande Compact. This pumping
greatly concerns New Mexico.
Under the 1906 treaty with the United States, Mexico
received 60,000 acre-feet of Rio Grande Project water each
year. If Mexico's Conejo wellfield pumping draws on the Rio
Grande, then New Mexico may have to demand that any depletions
resulting from Mexico's pumping be appropriately addressed by
the United States.
In summary, New Mexico is facing many challenges over the
waters of the lower Rio Grande. These challenges occur on many
fronts. The next decade will be crucial. In the meantime, the
State is moving rapidly forward with the lower Rio Grande
adjudication in an effort to provide greater certainty about
the nature and extent of water rights to farmers and other
water right claimants in the region. This adjudication is
necessary to build the proper and necessary foundation for a
future, efficient water market. Water markets are the key to
meeting any future water supply needs of the region.
Until the adjudication is complete, my office will work
with the city, the county, Elephant Butte Irrigation District,
the State of Texas, and other entities in the region within the
constraints of State water law to offer interim solutions for
their near-term water supply needs.
Thank you, Senator, and I will be glad to take any
questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for that excellent
statement. Let me ask if there is any projection that you could
give us as to the time frame for completing the adjudication
here in the southern Rio Grande. Is this a several-year project
or a decade-long project? Or can you give us any estimate as to
when it might be done?
Mr. Turney. We would hope at the end of another decade, it
is substantially moving along. The State legislature does have
something to say about this. They have provided additional
attorneys and engineers for us to begin to rapidly move through
completion. This year it was a 1-year appropriation and they
did give us a number of term employees, and we are hoping that
they will continue this appropriation in upcoming years. And it
is only if we have additional staff can we complete this within
a reasonable time frame.
Otherwise, if we go at our current staffing levels,
unfortunately, it will be decades and decades long.
The Chairman. You said that the Conejo wellfield that
Mexico is now developing will affect New Mexico's ability to
meet its obligation to deliver water in compliance with our
treaty with Mexico. Is that correct?
Mr. Turney. Yes.
The Chairman. This is the 60,000 acre-feet per year?
Mr. Turney. What it may impact more strongly is our ability
to deliver water to the State of Texas. But I am sure that
there will be an impact on this, on the 60,000 acre-feet
The Chairman. And that is because the drawing down of water
in the Mesilla Bolson would be expected to diminish the flow of
surface water in the Rio Grande? Is that what I am
understanding?
Mr. Turney. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. And you indicated that if that, in fact,
occurs, you would then look to the United States for some
adjustment to the New Mexico obligation? Is that what I
understood?
Mr. Turney. It may be some sort of an adjustment to that
60,000 acre-feet of water, because they may be taking out the
water out of the ground that they should have been receiving as
a surface water diversion.
The Chairman. Would you also expect that this would require
some renegotiation of the Texas-New Mexico compact, the Rio
Grande Compact?
Mr. Turney. Senator, I have not given that any thought one
way or another. I am sorry.
The Chairman. You heard the previous panel talk about some
of the issues surrounding the transfer of water that is
presently used for irrigation purposes over to municipal uses.
Are you in agreement that as far as New Mexico is concerned and
this Elephant Butte Irrigation District is concerned, that any
such transfer by individual water rights owners has to await
the final adjudication of this area?
Mr. Turney. No, sir. We are doing this adjudication in
steps and phases. And we started at the lower Rio Grande--or
excuse me, the upper portions of the basin and we are working
down to the bottom. This is an ongoing process. There will be
court orders that are currently coming out right now. We have
adjudicated, basically completed all the Nutt-Hawkett Basin
today.
There are adjudication orders coming out almost on a weekly
basis. And it is true that these will ultimately be subject to
interstate process, but certainly transfers can begin to occur
way before completion of the last piece of the adjudication in
20 years.
As a matter of fact, in downtown Las Cruces, there is a
number of small tracts of land. We have initiated a special
hydrographic survey, put out to contract, and the contractors
are starting to work on this as we speak. As soon as this is
completed, we are hoping we can work closely with the city on
how this process can be expedited quickly within my office.
The city needs additional water, and the idea of waiting
for 20 years is just unacceptable. And what we want to do is
establish some sort of a process that when application is made
to my office, that this kind of transfer can occur quickly. We
will, of course, have to evaluate it on the standard things, of
impairment of existing water rights, water conservation, and
public welfare of the State.
The Chairman. Let me ask about this Hunt Building
Corporation application. This is to take water out of the
Tularosa Basin. Is that right?
Mr. Turney. Actually, it is out of a small basin that looks
like about half a moon that exists below Alamogordo. It is a
separate basin called the Salt Basin. They did not make an
application yet. Instead what they made is they filed an
amended declaration. And the amended declaration stated that
they would be taking about 45,000 acre-feet of water for export
out of the area.
Subsequently, I have met with some of the people from that
area. Santa Teresa has very significant water supply problems
in their future because of the priority date of their water
rights. And it may be possible for the water to be pumped from
the Salt Basin to supply water to the Santa Teresa area or to
other areas in New Mexico.
The Chairman. So that would be a competing use that would
have to be considered, potential?
Mr. Turney. Competing use, I am not sure with who.
The Chairman. Well, the Hunt Building Corporation is not
expecting to use their 45,000 acre-feet to meet that need in
Santa Teresa, are they?
Mr. Turney. I have not yet met with Hunt Building
Corporation, so I do not know what their intentions are. I am
sorry, Senator, I cannot answer that question.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Turney. I can tell you, though, that because of New
Mexico's export statutes, it will be a lengthy process for them
to transfer water rights outside the State of New Mexico. It
may or may not be possible. And at this point right now, it
would be a lot easier to market those waters inside the State
of New Mexico.
The Chairman. You indicated that a possible source of water
for Las Cruces is the Jornada?
Mr. Turney. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. And is there water now being used out of the
Jornada? Are there wells there that the city of Las Cruces is
using?
Mr. Turney. The Jornada Basin, Senator, is located east of
this building that we are in today. It is a basically, a
separate, isolated basin. There is just a very, very tiny
connection from it to the Rio Grande. There are some wells in
the area, but we are talking about a major appropriation of
water from this area.
And there are some water companies that have filed
applications with our office, and we are in the process of
processing those. And probably within the next week or two, we
will be issuing final decisions on those as well. And these
will impact the amount of water that is available for the city
of Las Cruces.
But even considering what sizes of water claims that are
being made by some of these other private utilities that are
within the Jornada area, we anticipate we will be able to grant
a substantial amount of water to the city of Las Cruces from
this area.
The Chairman. Are there proposals that you know of for sort
of a State-based water bank, or is there anything to that
effect that has been floated as an idea to meet some of the
water needs in this region or elsewhere in the State?
Mr. Turney. Senator, certainly the idea of a water bank has
been heavily debated by the legislature. It is of interest
because of a lot of concerns, especially from the northern
parts of New Mexico, that this is just not an appropriate thing
to be discussing at this time. A water bank makes a lot of
sense once the adjudication is completed.
But I think that one major concern of a water bank is that
there will be a large tendency to float or to push into these
water banks a number of these claims for extraordinarily large
amounts of water and people will try and market these claims.
And in fact, these are simply claims, they are not a water
right. And it is my opinion that before New Mexico really
develops, gets actively involved in a water bank, it needs to
complete adjudications throughout the State.
The Chairman. Tell me which adjudications have been
completed in the State. Is there a group that has been
completed and then others that are still in process?
Mr. Turney. Senator, in the last 100 years, the State of
New Mexico has completed about 15 percent of its lands,
adjudications. At the rate we are going right now, that is
about 600 years to complete the entire State. Clearly, that is
not acceptable for the State. And we have actually been working
with the legislature. We are developing a 20-year plan to
basically complete all the adjudications in the entire State.
And the cost is going to be very expensive. I think about $170
million is our preliminary projections. We will also be looking
into----
The Chairman. $170 million would be spent over the 20
years?
Mr. Turney. That is right, yes. And we are looking at the
court process as well. We retained a retired supreme court
justice as well as a retired appeals court justice to give us
advice on how we can change the adjudication process to make it
work more quickly. And some of the ideas that are being floated
around right now are the establishment of a special water court
just to work on these adjudications. But it is a very, very
high priority throughout the State.
The Chairman. You have been very generous with your time,
and thank you very much for your testimony. And we wish you
well in these many challenges that you have. Thank you.
Mr. Turney. Thank you.
The Chairman. We will adjourn until 1:30. We will take the
final panel in this hearing at 1:30.
[Lunch recess.]
The Chairman. We will go ahead and start the hearing again.
We have a third panel that will address these issues from a
somewhat different perspective. Rick Gold, who is the Regional
Director with the Upper Colorado River Region for the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation is here. We appreciate you being here
very much. Deborah Little is here, and she is the principal
engineer with the International Boundary and Water Commission
in the U.S. section. And then Antonio Rascon is here. He is the
principal engineer with the International and Boundary Water
Commission in the Mexican section. Thank you all very much for
being here.
We will go in that order. Rick, will you start and give us
your thoughts, and then after all three of you have spoken, I
will have a few questions.
STATEMENT OF RICK L. GOLD, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, UPPER COLORADO
REGION, BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
Mr. Gold. Thank you, Senator. Mr. Chairman, thanks for the
opportunity to appear today to discuss reclamation's
involvement in meeting the water supply challenges facing the
southern New Mexico border region from Las Cruces to El Paso,
Texas, and Juarez.
My remarks today will be primarily concerned with water
contract conversions, which we have heard something about from
previous panels, conversion from irrigation to municipal and
industrial use, the proposed El Paso-Las Cruces Regional
Sustainable Water Project, and finally with desalination.
Virtually since its inception in 1902, the Bureau of
Reclamation has been involved in the management of water
resources in this region, focusing initially on traditional
irrigation water management and meeting the water delivery
treaty and compact requirements. As the population growth rates
have increased dramatically, the demand for safe drinking water
has also increased in direct proportion.
The groundwater basins may run out of fresh water. Shifting
from groundwater to surface water for drinking water supply in
sufficient quantity and quality has by necessity focused on
reclamation's Rio Grande Project. First let me touch on the
water contract conversions.
In February 1905, Congress authorized the construction of
the Rio Grande Project to supply irrigation water to lands in
the Rincon and Mesilla Valleys in southern New Mexico and the
El Paso Valley in west Texas. The project also supplies 60,000
acre-feet of water annually to Mexico under the 1906 treaty
obligation.
Acting within the laws of the then Territory of New Mexico,
Reclamation filed appropriations for water rights, which
included an initial 730,000 acre-feet annually and subsequently
all unappropriated water of the Rio Grande. Thus, all the water
in the Rio Grande between Elephant Butte Dam and Fort Quitman,
Texas, became Rio Grande Project water supply.
In February 1920, Congress passed the Sale of Water for
Miscellaneous Purposes Act. We also refer to that as the 1920
Act. It authorized the Secretary of the Interior to enter into
contracts to supply water from any reclamation irrigation
project for other purposes. That act imposes very specific
requirements designed to protect the integrity of those
projects and the Federal investments in them. Those
requirements include prior approval of the water users'
organizations, no other practical source of water must be
available, delivery must not be detrimental to the water
service for the involved irrigation project, and monies derived
must be placed into the reclamation fund and credited to the
project from which that supply is made.
In 1940, as you heard from a previous panel, the city of El
Paso approached Reclamation and El Paso County Water
Improvement District Number 1 to obtain surface water for a
growing city. The result was a 1920 Act contract allowing the
conversion of a portion of the irrigation water supply for
municipal and industrial use by El Paso without congressional
reauthorization. That is because of the content of the 1920
Act. Over the years a series of those conversion contracts
followed, the most recent being signed in June of this year,
2001.
Even more recently, Reclamation met with representatives of
the city of Las Cruces and the Elephant Butte Irrigation
District to discuss the long-range plans to gradually convert
project irrigation water to other uses. And although
conversions in Las Cruces are still several years away, we look
forward to working with Las Cruces and the Elephant Butte
district on a 1920 Act contract when the time is right.
Congress clearly recognized that the needs may change in
the areas served by reclamation irrigation projects.
Reclamation has used the 1920 Act again and again in the Rio
Grande Project to meet the changing needs of the project area.
The strict requirements of the 1920 Act have protected and will
continue to protect the rights and interests of everyone, the
affected States, the irrigation districts, individual
landowners and the Federal investment in the project.
Reclamation remains committed to work with these and other
interested parties in these conversions.
Second, let me shift to the El Paso-Las Cruces Regional
Sustainable Water Project. In the early 1990's, water managers
in the El Paso and Las Cruces area determined that some long-
term planning was advisable. Reclamation provided a little over
$1.1 million for a study to evaluate the ability of the
conveyance alternatives to deliver surface water of suitable
quantity and quality to each irrigation district and the city
of El Paso.
The most viable alternatives then underwent National
Environmental Policy Act analysis, resulting in the preparation
of the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the sustainable
project. Reclamation served as a cooperating agency in that
effort. Reclamation also participated as a member of the
steering committee of the New Mexico-Texas Water Commission,
whose role was to help guide the EIS process for the
sustainable project.
We believe that while this EIS was of a programmatic
nature, NEPA compliance will be required for future water
conversions of the Rio Grande Project. Any water conversions
must also be consistent with the statutes under which the Rio
Grande Project was authorized and other applicable laws,
especially the 1920 Act.
And finally, a few words about desalination. Desalination
water reuse and water purification technologies are
increasingly viable means to expand our fresh water supplies
and maintain water quality. Reclamation has been making
investments in developing and implementing these technologies
to meet the growing demands for water and relieve stress on
over-allocated rivers and groundwater systems. Our storage and
delivery facilities and our water and infrastructure
laboratories in Denver provide a unique and essential
capability that supports and integrates our technical
development and research efforts.
In addition to offering opportunities for expanding
supplies and improving water quality, alternative--desalination
and water purification technologies that are more energy-
efficient can reduce the large power consumption associated
with basin transfers and groundwater-pumped water supplies.
Reclamation has successfully implemented Public Law 104-
298, the Water Desalinization Act of 1996, and a report to
Congress on the findings of 5 years of research conducted under
the act is currently undergoing review within the Department of
the Interior.
Several of the advances achieved under the act could
potentially be applied here. Among those different technologies
addressed by the study, at least four appear particularly
promising. One, combines wastewater reclamation technology with
desalination techniques to purify wastewater to a level that
meets or exceeds drinking water standards. Through the use of
membrane bioreactors that use less space, equipment, chemicals,
and energy, this method may be cost-competitive with
conventional methods and have fewer environmental impacts.
Combining the research components of pretreatment intake,
advanced membranes, and a high-pressure pumping system to
facilitate continued development of acceptable concentrate
disposal methods is also promising. Third, a process called
dewvaporation, a humidification-dehumidification process that
is energy efficient and which uses innovative technology and
inexpensive materials. This could be a viable option for low-
cost, low-maintenance treatment for small communities.
And fourth, clathrate desalinization is an improved freeze
desalinization technique, which facilitates ice-like formation
of crystals at higher temperatures using guest molecules. These
are all sophisticated research ideas that are part of the
report that we are bringing forth to the Congress.
The conversion of irrigation to municipal and industrial
uses, the El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water
Project, and desalinization are all viable solutions to
providing safe drinking water for a growing population. The
Bureau of Reclamation remains committed to working with all the
stakeholders in the region to manage the water resources in an
economically efficient and environmentally sound manner to
address future water needs of the changing society and the
economy.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gold follows:]
Prepared Statement of Rick L. Gold, Regional Director, Upper Colorado
Region, Bureau of Reclamation
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear today to discuss the Bureau of Reclamation's
involvement in meeting the water supply challenges facing the southern
New Mexico border region, from Las Cruces to El Paso, Texas and Juarez,
Mexico. My remarks today will be primarily concerned with the water
contract conversions from irrigation to municipal and industrial uses,
the proposed El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water Project, and
desalination.
Virtually since its inception in 1902, the Bureau of Reclamation
has been involved in the management of water resources in this region,
focusing initially on traditional irrigation water management and
meeting water delivery, treaty, and compact requirements. As the
population growth rates have increased dramatically, the demand for
safe drinking water has also increased in direct proportion. The Texas
portion of the Hueco Bolson groundwater basin may run out of fresh
water by the year 2025 because water is being pumped out faster than it
can be replenished. Shifting from groundwater to surface water for
drinking water supply in sufficient quantity and quality has by
necessity focused on the Rio Grande Project.
WATER CONTRACT CONVERSIONS
On February 25, 1905, Congress authorized the construction of the
Rio Grande Project to supply irrigation water to lands in the Roncon
and Mesilla Valleys in southern New Mexico and the El Paso Valley in
west Texas. The project also supplies 60,000 acre-feet of water
annually to Mexico under the 1906 Treaty obligation. Acting within the
laws of the then-Territory of New Mexico, Reclamation filed
appropriations for water rights, which included an initial 730,000
acre-feet annually, and subsequently, all unappropriated water of the
Rio Grande. Thus, all water in the Rio Grande between Elephant Butte
Dam and Fort Quitman, Texas, became Rio Grande Project water supply.
On February 25, 1920, Congress passed the Sale of Water for
Miscellaneous Purposes Act (also known as the 1920 Act), authorizing
the Secretary of the Interior to enter into contracts to supply water
from any Reclamation irrigation project for other purposes. This act
grants the Secretary discretion as to the terms of such contracts, but
also imposes very specific requirements designed to protect the
integrity of those projects and the Federal investment in them:
Prior approval of the water user organizations must be
obtained;
A showing must be made that no other practicable source of
water supply is available;
Delivery of water under such contracts must not be
detrimental to water service for the involved irrigation
project or the rights of any prior appropriators;
Moneys derived from such contracts must be placed into the
Reclamation fund and credited to the project from which such
water is supplied.
The 1920 Act made it possible for Reclamation to utilize water
supplies from irrigation-only projects for other purposes without
Congressional re-authorization. This was an important development for
projects where no other water supply was available, such as in the case
of the Rio Grande Project where all water had been appropriated.
In 1940, the City of El Paso approached Reclamation and the El Paso
County Water Improvement District No. 1 to obtain surface water for a
growing city. The result was a 1920 Act contract allowing conversion of
a portion of the irrigation water supply for municipal and industrial
use by El Paso. Thus, a portion of a fully-appropriated water supply
was converted without Congressional re-authorization. Over the years, a
series of conversion contracts among these parties followed as El Paso
continued to grow, along with its need for additional water. The most
recent contract, signed in June 2001, will supply the expanded Jonathan
Rogers Treatment Plant.
Even more recently, Reclamation met with representatives of the
City of Las Cruces and Elephant Butte Irrigation District to discuss
Las Cruces' long-range plans to gradually convert Project irrigation
water to other uses. Although conversions in Las Cruces are still
several years away, we look forward to working with Las Cruces and
Elephant Butte Irrigation District on a 1920 Act contract when the time
is right.
Congress clearly recognized that needs may change in the areas
served by Reclamation irrigation projects. Since 1940, Reclamation has
used the 1920 Act again and again on the Rio Grande Project to meet the
changing needs of the Project area. During that time, the strict
requirements of the 1920 Act have protected, and will continue to
protect, the rights and interests of everyone--the affected states, the
irrigation districts, individual landowners, and the Federal investment
in the Project. Reclamation remains committed to working with these and
other interested parties.
EL PASO-LAS CRUCES REGIONAL SUSTAINABLE WATER PROJECT
Beginning in 1997, Reclamation, the City of El Paso, and the El
Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 determined that long-term
planning to meet the changing needs of the El Paso-Las Cruces area was
advisable. Reclamation provided $1,105,000 for a study to evaluate the
ability of conveyance alternatives to deliver surface water of suitable
quality and quantity to each irrigation district and the City of El
Paso. A model was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and a Boyle
Engineering/Parsons private consultant to evaluate the interaction
between the ground water systems and surface water flows in the Rio
Grande. The most viable of the alternatives then underwent National
Environmental Policy Act analysis resulting in the preparation of an
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the El Paso-Las Cruces
Regional Sustainable Water Project (Sustainable Project). Reclamation
served as a cooperating agency while the International Boundary and
Water Commission and City of El Paso Public Service Board were joint
lead agencies for the EIS which evaluated long-range proposals for
implementation. Reclamation participated as a member of the Steering
Committee of the New Mexico-Texas Water Commission, whose role was to
help guide the EIS process for the Sustainable Project. As part of our
written comments during the NEPA process, Reclamation is on record that
we believe the EIS to be programmatic in nature because the document
did not identify specific future sources and amounts of water to be
converted and that additional NEPA compliance will be required for
future water conversions of Rio Grande Project water. Additionally, we
reiterated that any water conversions must be consistent with the
statutes under which the Rio Grande Project is authorized and other
applicable laws especially the 1920 Act.
DESALINATION
Desalination, water reuse, and water purification technologies are
increasingly viable means to expand our fresh water supplies and
maintain water quality. Reclamation has been making investments in
developing and implementing these technologies to meet the growing
demand for water and to relieve stress on over-allocated rivers and
groundwater systems. Our many water storage and delivery facilities,
and our water and infrastructure laboratories in Denver, part of the
Federal Laboratory Consortium, provide a unique and essential
capability that supports and integrates our technical development and
research efforts. Under Reclamation's Science and Technology Program,
Reclamation has made many technological advances and continues to
improve water management in New Mexico and Texas along the Rio Grande.
In addition to offering opportunities for expanding fresh water
supplies and improving water quality, alternative, more energy-
efficient desalination and water purification technologies can reduce
the large power consumption associated with basin transfer and
groundwater pumped water supplies. As part of a Federal effort to spur
desalination research, Reclamation has successfully implemented Public
Law 104-298, the Water Desalination Act of 1996 (the Act). A report to
Congress on the findings of five years of research conducted under the
Act is currently undergoing review within the Department of the
Interior. Several of the advances achieved under the Act could
potentially be applied to New Mexico to show how the quality of life in
water-scarce regions could be improved by increasing water supplies
through water desalination.
Among the different technologies addressed by the study and the
report, at least four desalination technologies appear particularly
promising:
1. Combining wastewater reclamation technology with desalination
techniques to purify wastewater to a level that meets or exceeds
drinking water standards. Through the use of membrane bioreactors that
use less space, equipment, chemicals, and energy, this method may be
cost competitive with conventional methods and have fewer environmental
impacts.
2. Combining three research components (a pretreatment intake
system, advanced membranes, and a high pressure pumping system) to
facilitate continued development of acceptable concentrate disposal
methods.
3. Devaporation, a humidification-dehumidification process that is
energy efficient and which uses innovative technology and inexpensive
materials. This could be a viable option for low cost, low maintenance
treatment for small communities.
4. Clathrate desalination, an improved freeze desalination
technique which facilitates ice formation at higher temperatures using
guest molecules.
The conversion of irrigation to municipal and industrial uses, the
El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water Project, and desalination
are all viable solutions to the same problem, providing safe drinking
water for a growing population. The Bureau of Reclamation remains
committed to working with all stakeholders in the region to manage the
water resources in an economically efficient and environmentally sound
manner to address future water needs for a changing society and
economy. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks for today.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Ms. Little, go right ahead, please.
STATEMENT OF DEBRA J. LITTLE, PRINCIPAL ENGINEER, ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES SECTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY
AND WATER COMMISSION
Ms. Little. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to
discuss with you today the role of the International Boundary
and Water Commission in working with U.S. and Mexican water
users of southern New Mexico and a region that includes both El
Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.
The IBWC was established by the 1889 convention between the
United States and Mexico as an international commission
composed of a U.S. section, headquartered in El Paso, Texas,
and a Mexican section, headquartered in Ciudad Juarez,
Chihuahua, Mexico. The IBWC applies the water and boundary
treaties between the United States and Mexico and is tasked
with resolving all differences that may arise in the
application of those treaties.
The two major treaties that define the role of the IBWC in
water supply issues of the southern New Mexico border region
are the Convention of 1906, also known as the Treaty of 1906,
it is entitled ``Equitable Distribution of the Waters of the
Rio Grande,'' and the 1944 treaty, known as the 1944 Water
Treaty, and it is entitled ``Utilization of Waters of the
Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande.''
The 1906 convention provides for the distribution between
the United States and Mexico of the waters of the Rio Grande
for irrigation purposes in the greater El Paso-Juarez area.
Mexico receives 60,000 acre-feet annually at the Acequia Madre,
or Old Mexico Canal, in Juarez, Mexico. In case of
extraordinary drought, which is not defined by the treaty, the
amount delivered to Mexico is reduced in the same proportion as
water delivered to U.S. irrigators.
The 1944 treaty extended the terms of the 1889 convention
and expanded the duties of the IBWC. In fact, the 1944 treaty
is known as making the IBWC the IBWC of today. Decisions of the
commission are executed in the form of minutes, and these
minutes, when approved by the U.S. and Mexico governments,
become legally binding agreements of the two countries.
In terms of the Rio Grande waters, the 1944 treaty provides
for allocation between the two countries of these waters
between Fort Quitman, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico. Now,
although this part of the river is downstream approximately 75
river miles from the El Paso-Juarez area, the significance of
the 1944 treaty for the El Paso-Juarez region lies in several
articles of that 1944 treaty.
Among them, Article 3 provides for the preference of joint
international water use ranging from, first, domestic and
municipal, through agricultural and stock raising, electric
power, other industrial, navigation, fishing and hunting, to
the last preference described as any other beneficial uses. All
of these uses are subject to the preferential attention to be
given to the solution of all border sanitation problems.
Article 24 extends to the IBWC the powers and duties to
initiate and carry on investigations and develop plans for the
works to be constructed or established in accordance with the
treaty and other agreements enforced between the two
governments dealing with boundaries and international waters.
The IBWC has historically played a major role in the
distribution of Rio Grande waters as required by the two
treaties mentioned. More recently, it has taken on a leadership
of initiatives that stretch the boundaries of its traditional
roles. This has resulted in a number of challenges for its
century-old experience in international cooperation for the
solution of boundary water issues.
These initiatives include the New Mexico-Texas Water
Commission's El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water
Project, the Paso Del Norte Watershed Council, regional
groundwater studies, most specifically the Hueco Bolson, the
Rio Grande Citizens Forum for the El Paso-Las Cruces Area, and
the Paso Del Norte Water Task Force. These multijurisdictional
initiatives all involve, as indicated this morning, layers of
competing interests, two different countries, which there are
many differing authorities, responsibilities, histories, and
jurisdictions covering, in addition, numerous local authorities
and two different, very different, U.S. States.
All involve technically complex situations for which there
is not always complete or accurate information or data. All
present the challenge of how to identify and provide full
participation of all stakeholders. Also, all present the
challenge of how to find water for the environment, to improve
the health of that environment, and still adequately meet the
needs of human beings. And finally, all pose the challenge of
assuring what is very critical to the International Boundary
and Water Commission, an international relationship that is
based on parity and comity of both nations.
The El Paso-Las Cruces Regional Sustainable Water Project
proposes to protect and maintain the sustainability of
groundwater sources for the area by relying on year-round water
supply from the Rio Grande. The U.S. section of the IBWC was
asked, and agreed, to take on a leadership role for the
environmental documentation for this project required by NEPA,
the National Environmental Policy Act, for which the record of
decision was signed on January 16 of this year.
In addition to this role as the Federal environmental lead,
which involved the challenges of dealing with those competing
interests, providing full stakeholder representation, and
understanding the complexities of long-term effects of the
project on the environment, the U.S. section of the IBWC has
its traditional and mandated role to assure that treaty,
compact, and contract requirements for water deliveries are
met. And in regard to parity and comity with Mexico, there is
the challenge of addressing varying viewpoints about the extent
to which impacts in Mexico should be considered during project
implementation.
The Paso Del Norte Watershed Council was formed as an
environmental enhancement commitment of the project I just
described. The U.S. section of the IBWC has co-chaired the
formation of this council with the intent to utilize a
watershed approach, the watershed being that of the Rio Grande
sub-basin between Elephant Butte Dam, New Mexico, and Fort
Quitman, Texas, and to improve the Rio Grande ecosystem while
balancing the needs of all stakeholders and foster
communication and collaboration among the binational
stakeholders in the watershed.
Groundwater study and modeling of the transboundary
aquifer, the Hueco Bolson, began in 1995 as an information
exchange between the El Paso and Juarez municipal water
utilities. The IBWC formed a binational technical group of
local, State, and Federal representatives and produced a
binational report blessed by both countries entitled
``Transboundary Aquifers and Binational Groundwater Database,
City of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez Area.'' This does consist of a
database on ground waters in the area.
This same binational technical group is in the final stages
of developing compatible mathematical groundwater models for
the Hueco Bolson that will assist authorities in both countries
with planning for optimum utilization and administration of
groundwater resources of the region.
The challenges posed by this study and modeling effort
include moving from data exchange to obtaining more complete
information on the aquifer, producing modeling tools that truly
are compatible in results, and providing due consideration to
the master planning efforts of Juarez in view of decreasing
groundwater supply in the minimal resources available to
adequately study groundwater conditions.
The Rio Grande Canalization Project was constructed in 1938
and covers 105 miles of the Rio Grande from Percha Dam, New
Mexico, to El Paso, Texas. The U.S. section built this project
in order to assure the safe delivery of those 1906 convention
waters to the El Paso-Juarez area. The project consists of
maintenance of the river channel, flood control levies, and a
vegetation-controlled floodway to assure the prevention of
flooding by river waters.
The U.S. section is currently performing an environmental
impact study of the project with the objective of preserving
the integrity of the traditional flood protection aspects of
the project to assure continued water deliveries of the 1906
convention waters, and to identify and consider environmental
enhancement opportunities and nonstructural operational
practices that support restoration of native riparian and
aquatic habitats.
With the draft environmental impact statement scheduled for
December of this year and the record of decision expected by
April of next year, the U.S. section faces the challenges of
reconciling that traditional role of providing necessary flood
protection and safe delivery of joint waters with the interest
of the stakeholders in providing water for the environment and
utilizing a watershed approach the river management versus the
jurisdictional approach.
Rehabilitation of the Rio Grande canalization project
features, which consists of two irrigation water siphons and a
flume, is needed to assure the structural integrity of these
conveyance system for the agricultural community of southern
New Mexico. The U.S. section has completed rehabilitation
studies of those features, which indicate that river channel
degradation has been a cause of the problem, with some field
investigations still needed for the flume rehab. The designs
for rehabilitation of siphons are complete and construction is
planned to commence in the upcoming nonirrigation season.
And in response to community stakeholder interest in this
canalization project, the U.S. section of the IBWC formed the
Rio Grande Citizens Forum. This forum represents cross-
sectional interests in the community, is chaired by a
representative of the U.S. section of the IBWC and a community
representative from the Southwest Environmental Center here in
Las Cruces, and facilitates dialogue about IBWC projects in the
Rio Grande from Percha to Fort Quitman. The quarterly meetings
are held alternately in Las Cruces and El Paso, and topics
include proposed river parks, non-native species eradication,
siphon and flume rehab, which I just spoke about, and upper Rio
Grande water operations model.
In April 1999, the IBWC commissioners convened the Paso Del
Norte Water Task Force, a regional organization of civic
leaders, managers of municipal water utilities and irrigation
districts, water users, and water experts from New Mexico,
Texas, and Chihuahua, working toward a more sustainable water
use in the region. Again, this region being from Elephant Butte
Dam to Fort Quitman.
The task force functions as an apolitical advisory
organization that bases its work on input from scientific
analysis and community consultation.
The task force first study was that of water planning
activities in the region. The results of this substitute study
were disseminated in the March 2001 report entitled, ``Water
Planning in the Paso Del Norte Toward Regional Coordination.''
Its three broad conclusions are: There are gaps in the
information needed for planning. Water entities in this region
face many common challenges and issues, and regional
coordination in water planning is definitely needed. The major
challenge facing this task force and the IBWC as the conveners
of the task force is identifying the next steps that can be
taken within the current institutional context--and I must
stress, there is not a formal regional planning management
entity in existence--to move the region towards a more
sustainable water future.
This challenge is recognized in the context of the task
force stated goals that include keeping abreast of progress
being made by others, to avoid duplication of efforts, and
submitting policy recommendations to appropriate authorities in
Mexico and the United States for resolution of high priority
water issues in the Paso Del Norte water region.
Mr. Chairman, as my report has made clear, hopefully, the
IBWC's role in working with area water users, both in the
United States and Mexico, is one that is based on over 100
years of experience in meeting treaty obligations on water
issues between the two countries, and one that is responding to
a call for the IBWC to take a stronger leadership role in
addressing the challenge of providing a sustainable water
resource for the southern New Mexico border region.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify on
behalf of this agency. And I would like to conclude by inviting
my counterpart, Principal Engineer Antonio Rascon of the
Mexican section of the IBWC, to present some concluding
observations on behalf of the Mexican section. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rascon, we are very pleased to have you here. Go right
ahead.
STATEMENT OF ANTONIO RASCON, PRINCIPAL ENGINEER, MEXICAN
SECTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY AND WATER COMMISSION
Mr. Rascon. On behalf of the Mexican section of the
International Boundary and Water Commission, I would like to
stress some aspects that were mentioned by Ms. Little. I would
like to point out the efforts that have taken place under the
IBWC coordination regarding groundwater in the El Paso-Juarez
area.
These efforts included the exchange of groundwater
information and the development of a joint report in both
English and Spanish as well as a joint development of
groundwater flow model that is now next to be finished. This
was done by a binational technical group under the IBWC
coordination. We had to deal with different tools, criteria,
resources and priorities on each side of the border. It has
come to develop its own model but under a coordinated scheme.
What each country did was discussed by a binational group
in such a way that the results obtained by each country were
acceptable by the other. Once the full model is finished, a
groundwater quality model could be the next step.
The Chairman. Could you say that once more? I was not able
to hear that. Say that last thing once more.
Mr. Rascon. The groundwater quality model, the first one
was a flow model, and the next step could be a water quality
model. This would provide more precise information regarding to
the water quality distribution in the aquifer, the volumes and
location of the fresh groundwater bodies, and the time it will
take to--not to deplete the aquifer, because it is quite a big
one, but what time will it take for the water quality to
decline.
On the other hand, I want to mention that a master plan was
developed for Juarez city with the support of BECC, the Border
Environmental Cooperation Commission. The master plan
describes, among other aspects, which are the water sources for
the city, how the water demand is going to grow in the future,
which new sources are going to be developed to meet the demand,
when the new sources need to be in operation, and what will be
the cost to do it.
That master plan clearly indicates what where the water is
going to come from to support the future growth and the
development of the city, including the Conejos Medano and
others that was mentioned this morning. We are talking about a
project that is going to supply 12 cubic meters per second by
the year 2020.
I also should mention that a regional plan is to be
developed with the objective to identify water projects of
common interest in the area of Ciudad Juarez-El Paso. The
starting point for this regional planning is the master plan in
Juarez and the sustainable water project developed for El Paso-
Las Cruces.
As a first step, funds were provided through BECC to
prepare the terms of reference to develop the regional plan.
These are expected to be concluded within the next few months.
Options like surface water, groundwater, desalination, or
conservation will be evaluated.
The IBWC has supported the efforts of the local agencies.
We know that it is very important that the local agencies take
the leadership in identifying the water problems and their
solutions. We always offer the experience and support of the
IBWC for the binational coordination of these kind of projects
that involve international or transboundary waters. Of course,
a closer and stronger binational leadership can be achieved by
the IBWC when the resources are provided directly to the
commission.
As a conclusion, I think that a lot of things have been
done regarding cooperation on water issues and a lot need to be
done, and I am sure we are going to find a way to do it. Thank
you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Thank you for your
testimony. Let me see if I could start with some questions for
you, Mr. Gold. Have you done anything in the Bureau of
Reclamation to determine the cost-effectiveness of any of these
potential desalinization/desalination technologies? Is this
something that would make sense from a cost perspective?
Mr. Gold. Yes, Senator. Part of the previous research that
was done, does, in fact, deal with how cost-effective some of
these techniques might be. I think they still have a long ways
to go in terms of being as cheap as some of the current water
supplies. But significant improvements, particularly as an
example I might give you, the average costs of seawater
desalination have dropped from somewhere around $14 per
thousand gallons in the 1950's to between $2 and $3 per
thousand gallons in the year 2000.
Now, obviously, that depends on power needs and costs,
capital recovery and many other things. But it is becoming more
attractive. To say it would be attractive enough at this point
in time for cities or small entities to rely completely upon
desalinization as a water supply is probably a stretch. But we
have made great progress, and I think that is the principal
reason that we support some continued research to reduce the
risk. Let some of these new technologies ripen and get more and
more competitive with the ever increasing costs of providing
water supplies.
The Chairman. Let me ask about some of the statements that
were made this morning by the representative from El Paso, the
utility down there, that the process for water transfer is
unnecessarily cumbersome, in his view. Is that something you
agree with? Disagree with? Is there anything being done to
address that? Or what is your perspective on that, Mr. Gold?
Mr. Gold. I think it is understandable, John's perspective
that it is cumbersome. Keep in mind we are dealing with a set
of Federal laws imposed by the U.S. Congress starting in 1905.
The most important legislative tool that we have to allow this
conversion to take place is the 1920 Act. So a lot of things
have changed, and yet we do not have a clear legislative tool
that has improved upon that situation.
Now, in our own defense, I think that it is certainly
possible, it has been demonstrated possible, to convert from
agriculture supplies to municipal supplies. We have a long
history of doing that with EP Number 1 going back as far as the
1940's. Mr. Fifer mentioned the several contracts that we have
been through.
I think if you go back to the basic requirements that we
have, things like being able to do this with the prior approval
of the water district, with no other practical source
available, cannot be detrimental to the water service of the
involved irrigation districts, and that monies derived have to
be placed back to the Reclamation Fund. In the case of Rio
Grande Project, it is also really important to keep in mind, it
is not a one-district project. It was originally designed with
three key participants, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, El
Paso Number 1, and the country of Mexico.
So we need to take a position that whatever we do to modify
and allow modification to occur to that project that was built
in the 1900's, it has to protect all of the participants. Our
concern is that the whole project must stay whole as opposed to
granting the desires of any given participant. So we think it
is important. I admit, certainly, to understanding John's
frustration, but certainly it is a possibility. It has been
worked through. There are mechanisms that make it work.
Probably the most frustrating part--and we could sort this
out with John--but is that from our perspective, the irrigation
district, in this case El Paso Number 1, has to agree, and I am
sure that has been a very frustrating issue. It is not the
Bureau of Reclamation that gets to decide. That water supply
was originally intended for EP Number 1, and the law for
conversion requires us to have their agreement.
The Chairman. How do you respond to the criticism that
getting these transfers to occur provides an opportunity for
the Bureau of Reclamation to essentially take its pound of
flesh as part of the process? What is your response to that?
Mr. Gold. My response would go like this. If you looked at
the total cost that the United States invested in building the
Rio Grande Project, certainly I think all would agree that a
fairly substantial portion of those costs are not repaid. We
have a situation where the local districts have repaid their
irrigation obligations, as Gary Esslinger said this morning,
and we agree with that.
The problem is there were other Federal investments that
were not repaid. There are also the mechanism of whether or not
the United States has a continuing interest, and we do not need
to go there. That is part of litigation that is ongoing in this
basin. But that is also one of the threshold issues. Even
though the project has had its irrigation repayment repaid, is
there a continuing interest in the project by the United
States?
My answer would be yes, because, again, of the three
entities who are the linchpins of the project, the two
irrigation districts and Mexico.
To assume that the United States has no further interest
just does not get there for us. So yes, it is a small amount, I
think it is like a 5 percent or $5 an acre-foot in a water
supply that I do not know the most current exchange rate, but
it is probably upwards of $150 or $200 an acre-foot, a fairly
modest contribution to the United States.
The Chairman. Is it your thought that these laws, these old
laws that you operate under here in approving these
conversions, that those should be modernized and simplified? Is
that what I heard you to say?
Mr. Gold. I do not know that I would suggest that. I would
simply say that they are the tools that we have. Could they
simplify the life of some of the folks out there who are trying
to convert from ag to M&I? Very possibly. I think the risk is
that if you were to open those laws and start to try to achieve
what any given interest might want, many other interests might
also come to that now legislative debate about how they would
like to see the arrangements changed between the United States
and its districts. So it is tender ground, from my perspective.
It may, in fact, help the frustration, but it may, in fact,
hinder it.
The Chairman. So you think that the political and
institutional constraints imposed by the Federal bureaucracy,
which John Burkstaller referred to, are not near as great as he
was indicating?
Mr. Gold. I think the demonstrated impact is that it works.
We can get the job done. We can convert water from ag to M&I
with the agreement among the local sponsors. If they can come
to that agreement about what makes sense, we can get it done.
And we have demonstrated that many times in the Rio Grande
Basin.
The Chairman. Ms. Little, let me ask you about some of the
testimony we had this morning. I thought it was interesting,
particularly the State engineer's suggestion that if Mexico
goes ahead with the development of this Conejo field of wells,
that that would cause the State to believe that the Federal
Government, perhaps, should revisit this obligation to provide
60,000 acre-feet of water each year.
Because as I understood his testimony, he was saying that
development of that field will, in fact, reduce the flow of
water in the Rio Grande, that is, that New Mexico is able to
provide.
Ms. Little. I think the first thing that would have to be
established is that that is a fact, that the development of the
Conejos Medanos would, in fact, reduce the river flow. That
would be the first thing. But he was correct in stating that
should that be an allegation on the part of the State of New
Mexico, that it would be appropriate to take that to the
national level, because it would be a dispute under the 1906
treaty, and the IBWC is tasked with resolving disputes under
that treaty.
The Chairman. Has the IBWC looked into that question of
whether or not the putting of those wells in this Conejos
Medanos would, in fact, have that effect?
Ms. Little. No, we have not. As a joint effort, we have
not.
The Chairman. Is that something you intend to do or should
do?
Ms. Little. I would say, as you stated earlier this
morning, that it is very appropriate to do joint monitoring and
studies of what the actual physical conditions of transboundary
aquifers are.
The Chairman. So you think it is an appropriate thing to
look at jointly?
Ms. Little. Yes, jointly.
The Chairman. What about this concern I raised this
morning, if we do not have agreement on the two sides about
what the current status of the water supply is in these various
aquifers and, therefore, we do not have agreement on the
projected depletion of the aquifers. It seems to me that is a
sort of a real basic kind of a thing, which I would have
thought that the IBWC would have been able to accomplish that.
I would have thought that would be one of the main purposes
of the IBWC, would be to get this consensus developed about
what the water availability and needs are along the border. Am
I wrong in that?
Ms. Little. Well, yes, I would address that. Let me first
mention that groundwater is not something, as I mentioned, that
was addressed in the 1906 or the 1944 treaties. It is implied
that because we have the duty to conduct studies affecting
boundary water issues, that, of course, we could and should
play a role in transboundary aquifers or groundwater.
There is a more specific obligation under one of our
minutes, Minute 242, that actually deals with the Colorado
issue of groundwater. But from that, there is a basic, basic
responsibility for a groundwater treaty to be developed between
the two nations. That has not occurred, and it is something
that the IBWC would be tasked with actually developing.
What has happened is that in various locations along the
border, groundwater issues have been studied and in some places
jointly studied--and I would say El Paso-Juarez is probably at
the forefront of that--have been studied, but on an aquifer-by-
aquifer basis. There is no agreement between the two nations on
groundwater management, none whatsoever.
I do think it is appropriate that we work in that
direction. The IBWC, both sections, believe it is appropriate.
But I think you pointed out this morning something basic, that
there is a tremendous resource investment in actually
determining what are the conditions of the groundwaters. There
are projections made. There is not agreement with the country
of Mexico that those projections are made on accurate and
correct information.
Regardless, it does not diminish the fact that it is a
critical situation and that we need to move forward jointly,
not unilaterally, jointly with the country of Mexico. And in
doing so, major challenges are involved because of the
resources available to actually study and get accurate
information.
The Chairman. Well, bringing it down to sort of bedrock,
from my perspective, if, in fact, you have these predictions
being published in the literature that Juarez is going to run
out of water by 2005----
Ms. Little. A projection that is made by the United States.
The Chairman. Right.
Ms. Little. Not by Mexico.
The Chairman. Not by Mexico. But that is 4 years down the
road.
Ms. Little. Yes.
The Chairman. Four and a half.
Ms. Little. If it is correct. That is right.
The Chairman. Yes. It seems to me that it should be
someone's priority to figure out if it is correct.
Ms. Little. That is right.
The Chairman. What is happening that has not already
happened to try to get a binational effort to figure out if
that is correct?
Ms. Little. Well, the effort that I talked about, which is
the groundwater study of the Hueco Bolson, in which USGS
participated, we are projecting by the end of this year to have
a report on the model, which would show the actual flow
characteristics of that. But it would be one that is produced--
that would actually have binational agreement on what is
happening in that aquifer.
As Engineer Rascon stated, though, it is not addressing
water quality. We need to invest time and money and expertise
in actually looking at the quality of the aquifer. Engineer
Rascon mentioned there is probably adequate water. It is the
quality of that water that is available. And I agree that that
effort needs to go forward. And I do believe, as somebody
mentioned this morning, that that needs Federal support dollars
in order to advance that.
The Chairman. Federal support to determine the quality?
Ms. Little. The quality as well as the other physical
characteristics of that aquifer.
The Chairman. So the USGS work that has been done to date
is not adequate to tell us what we need to know?
Ms. Little. It is not complete.
The Chairman. And you agree with that, Mr. Rascon?
Mr. Rascon. Well, I think that a lot of things have been
mentioned. Maybe I would like to start by the Conejo Medano
development is a development that is going to take place quite
south from the border. We are talking about some kilometers
south of the border, and quite a big distance from the Rio
Grande. And the 1906 treaty is regarding of surface water, so
we need to decide whether we want a groundwater treaty--at this
moment, we do not have a groundwater treaty--and make the
necessary studies in order to define whether an impact, if
there is an impact from the developments that are being planned
in New Mexico. But the developments are taking place or are
planned to take place quite south from the border.
Regarding the Hueco Bolson, the joint efforts that were
taken were mostly exchange of information and not flow model.
The flow model is providing some results, but not the
distribution of the water quality in the aquifer. There is a
lot of information that I am sure that could be used and maybe
was used by the USGS and they could have obtained some figures
on the Mexican side. But the results that have presented to the
Mexican part were not well supported when they were presented.
The conclusion was that we need more detailed information
regarding the characteristics of the aquifer in order to arrive
to a more specific conclusion. And we can say that it can take
5 years or 20 years. It depends on some parameters that we
input to the model.
The fact is that the water in the aquifer is being over-
exploited very well within the aquifer. We are taking more
water than it is being recharged. The water quality is
declining. But we are not saying that we are going to get out
of water. The water is there. The aquifer is quite big. We are
going to have water of poorer quality. We are talking about
water quality more than quantity.
The Chairman. So you think there is adequate water, it is
just poor quality. The quality is going to continue to
deteriorate as you drain the aquifer?
Mr. Rascon. Yes, it is being deteriorated. We know that
there is a declining in the quality of water, and it is going
to continue. As a matter of fact, there are some wells that
need to be abandoned because of the quality, but there are
other areas where the quality is still good.
So it is a matter of defining what are the areas where the
quality is going to continue to be good. So we need more
detailed studies in order to clearly identify where are
different water bodies.
The Chairman. What is happening to bring about these more
detailed studies that you seem to support and that the U.S.
side seems to support? Is this strictly a matter of not having
enough dollars to proceed? Is that where we are?
Mr. Rascon. Well, I think when we want to develop
groundwater studies along the border, we need to--we have
different priorities. We have different criteria. And in order
to develop a joint study, we need to put together our interests
on both sides of the border. And we understand that in the
United States, there are a lot of resources, personnel, and
capabilities to develop these studies.
We need to select specific areas to start this joint
effort, because the capabilities on the Mexican side are more
limited. So we identified some specific sites to develop these
studies, and El Paso-Juarez was one of them so, we started to
exchange information and all those kind of things.
The Chairman. Who are the primary--I mean, we have had a
discussion here this morning and here again this afternoon
about all of the different agencies, Federal, State, local,
that have responsibilities here on the U.S. side. Who are the
counterparts on the Mexican side, across on the Juarez side?
Mr. Rascon. Well, we have the Mexican section of the
International Boundary and Water Commission.
The Chairman. Right.
Mr. Rascon. And then we have the National Water Commission.
In general, the water is a Federal--is something that is
managed federally. They give concessions to the States or the
cities to develop some aquifers or some wells. So the
coordination in this case in the Mexican section was with the
Mexican section of the National Water Commission and the La
Junta de Agua, the local utility.
The Chairman. Let me ask, Ms. Little, you refer in your
testimony to the review that is now going on, and I guess you
are coming, a NEPA study, I believe?
Ms. Little. In connection with the canalization project?
The Chairman. Yes, in connection with the canalization. Is
it your expectation that the end result of that will be a
change in policy so that the clearing of vegetation along the
Rio Grande will cease or be moderated?
Ms. Little. I think moderated is probably an appropriate
term. The alternatives that are being studied at this point, I
believe there are four alternatives--I may be mixing that up
with the lower Rio Grande EIS, so I better step back from that.
But there are varying degrees to a complete outside the
jurisdiction of the IBWC alternative, in other words, a true
approach that would involve actions on the parts of
jurisdictions that are not necessarily within IBWC authority.
But I do think that we are looking at modifying, certainly
modifying our traditional approach to the floodway.
The Chairman. And that can be done under your existing
statutory authority, as you see it? I mean, there is no need
for Congress to change the law in order to bring about that
change in policy?
Ms. Little. That is correct.
The Chairman. Well, I think this has all been useful. I
think there are a lot of issues that have been raised and we
will undoubtedly follow up on with some additional questions in
the future. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.
Ms. Little. You are welcome.
Mr. Gold. Thank you.
The Chairman. Well, thank you all very much for coming and
thank the witnesses again for the testimony. I think this has
been a useful airing of issues, and we will try to follow up on
some of these suggestions. We will conclude the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 2:32 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]