By Diego Mendoza-Moyers for El Paso Matters.
Broadcast version by Freda Ross for Texas News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
El Pasoans will no longer have to rely on the Rio Grande for drinking water in the near future, as El Paso Water gradually replaces the river that has historically supplied nearly half of the city’s water with other sources that are less susceptible to drought.
Regional drought and fluctuating snowfall at the head of the Rio Grande basin in southern Colorado in recent years have left El Paso Water officials increasingly unsure how much water will flow through the river into the city each year.
In 2020, water from the Rio Grande supplied 38% of the city’s water, but in the next two years, the river supplied just 14% and 17% of El Paso’s water supply. Last year, river water provided 31%.
Soon, however, El Paso Water won’t have to worry about those yearly fluctuations as much.
“We’re probably only a year or two out from being able to operate without any water” from the Rio Grande, said John Balliew, El Paso Water’s longtime chief executive. “We would like to be drought-proof as a community.”
If the drought in the region persists or even gets worse in the years ahead, instead of relying on the Rio Grande for water, El Paso’s water utility plans to use a mix of technologies to make up the difference.
Balliew highlighted the $150 million advanced water purification plant that will clean wastewater to drinkable standards and is expected to start operating next to the utility’s Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant in the Lower Valley within the next few years, as well as an expansion at El Paso’s water desalination plant near the airport to boost daily production capacity to 33 million gallons per day from 27.5 million currently. The utility is paying for that desal plant expansion by using some of the extra cash generated from the rate increase it enacted earlier this year.
An engineered arroyo in the far Northeast will also allow the utility to pump more excess water underground to replenish groundwater supplies.
“With all of those things put together, I would agree with what (Balliew is) saying,” said Alex Mayer, director of the Center for Environmental Resource Management at the University of Texas at El Paso. “There’ll be very little reliance on the Rio Grande.”
Shifting away from the Rio Grande as a water source is a big development for El Paso’s water utility, which is expecting to see a more intense drought next year amid a La Niña weather pattern.
Scott Reinert, water resources manager for El Paso Water, said he expects Elephant Butte will be just 5% full this fall, down from about 12% full as of August 1 and 23% full this time last year. Once snow melts in southern Colorado after winter, it flows south through the Rio Grande basin in New Mexico before reaching Elephant Butte, where the water is released to El Paso. So, the city will probably receive less water from the Rio Grande next year and will have to pump more groundwater compared with this year, Balliew said.
“This year is relatively normal, but next year is probably not,” Balliew said.
On average, El Pasoans use about 110 million gallons of water per day. On the hottest summer days, however, water usage across the city can top 162 million gallons as people water their plants more, run water-using evaporative air conditioners or shower more than once.
El Paso Water says it can pump a maximum of 170 million gallons of groundwater from its system per day. And the Advanced Water Purification plant will produce as much as 10 million gallons per day when it’s up-and-running – the “window” of supplies that the utility needs, Balliew said.
“That 10 is an important number, because that’s really the difference between having to implement the drought and water emergency plan and not,” Balliew said. “Ten million gallons per day is the window that we need to be able to operate without any surface water.”
The utility isn’t quite there yet; for now even a small amount of water coming from Elephant Butte “makes all the difference,” Balliew said.
An ongoing years-long water dispute between Texas, New Mexico and the federal government – over complaints that New Mexico has shorted Texas on Rio Grande water deliveries – remains stalled after the U.S Supreme Court in June rejected a settlement between the two states. But even if the parties reach a settlement at some point, persistent drought and climate change still threaten to further diminish Rio Grande flows into El Paso.
El Paso Water’s strategy to develop a drought-proof supply of drinking water is motivated by history.
Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, El Paso was entirely dependent on the Rio Grande for water, but a severe drought hit and by 1951 the city’s water utility warned of shortages. At a meeting of the city water board that year, Water Department Superintendent E. J. Umbenhauer said “there isn’t going to be enough water to go around this summer,” according to the El Paso Times.
After that water shortage episode, El Paso leaders in 1952 established the Public Service Board to govern city-owned El Paso Water and solve the problem of water scarcity here. Part of the solution over the last several decades has been encouraging water conservation – a success up until now that has driven daily water usage down from 187 gallons per person in 1990 down to around 130 gallons per person today.
The utility hasn’t been able to lower per-person usage much further over the last decade, however. As a result, diversifying the city’s water supply, instead of just lowering demand, has also become a major focus for El Paso Water.
“What we have been striving for for many years is to get to a point where, if that happens again, where there’s no water that can come out of the Rio Grande,” Balliew said, “that we would be able to continue to operate the city like normal.”
To make up a shortfall in river water in any given year, the water utility pumps more groundwater out of the Hueco Bolson aquifer and, to a lesser extent, the Mesilla Bolson beneath the Westside. Over the last four years, the Hueco Bolson has annually provided as little as 40% of El Paso’s water and as much as 61%.
“It’s meaningful in that we won’t have to worry about that variability anymore, which is very likely caused by climate change,” Mayer said of less reliance on the Rio Grande. “The consequence of that is that the cost goes up.”
Largely replacing the Rio Grande with more reliable water sources won’t come cheap.
El Paso Water has been spending heavily in recent years to renovate the city’s aging water and sewer systems that were built in the post-World War II era, and also to develop new water supply and storage systems.
During this year and the next two years, the utility plans to spend $2.3 billion on capital projects compared with $1.3 billion over the prior three years, from 2021 through 2023. In order to fund citywide infrastructure improvements, El Paso Water in its 2023 financial report said it expected water rates to double over the ensuing five years, and wastewater rates to rise by 86% over that time.
Roughly speaking, it costs El Paso Water something like $150 to pump an acre-foot of fresh groundwater, which is nearly 326,000 gallons of water. Drawing and treating an acre-foot of surface water from the Rio Grande costs around $300. And an acre-foot of desalinated water costs the utility about $500 to produce.
Meanwhile, the advanced water purification process that El Paso Water plans to rely more on in the future costs $1,000 per acre-foot of water produced, according to the utility’s estimates. And piping water from Dell City into El Paso – El Paso Water’s long term water supply plan for the decades ahead – will cost around $3,000 per acre-foot.
“The poorest people in the city will be paying as much as 10% of their income just for indoor water. That doesn’t include outdoor water,” Mayer said. “It’s time to start thinking about how these increases are going to affect our poorest residents.”
El Paso Water’s rates per gallon increase as a customer uses more water. So Mayer suggested El Paso Water could look at lifting rates even further on the highest-use tiers, meaning the biggest water consumers would see the largest bill hike. The utility could also look at increasing the fixed charge on the bill, called the water supply replacement charge, Mayer said.
Balliew last year said El Paso Water needed to study more how to give a “life line” to low-income customers with water bills set to escalate further in the coming years. He said the utility will at some point establish a citizen committee and take a look at changing how it bills customers. He also suggested El Paso Water could tweak the block tiers in which customers pay more per unit of water after using a certain amount of water every month.
El Paso Water is poised to maintain a stable water supply for decades, but the question is how much that may cost customers.
“We don’t want companies to make a decision: ‘Well, we’re not going to invest in El Paso because of the water supply situation,’” Balliew said.
El Paso Water, Balliew added, is “confident, regardless of what sort of climate impact, drought, those sorts of things, that we’ll be able to function normally.”
Diego Mendoza-Moyers wrote this article for El Paso Matters.
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A recent report gives the majority of cruise ships anchoring in Maine ports a failing environmental grade.
The Cruise Ship Report Card from Friends of the Earth finds companies, including Carnival and Princess Cruises, release significant amounts of toxic wastewater and air pollution while docked in cities such as Portland and Bar Harbor.
Report author and the group's Oceans and Vessels Program Director, Marcie Keever, said newer ships may run on liquefied natural gas, but are still adding to the industry's climate footprint.
"You're driving your hotel around on the ocean," said Keever. "It's going to use a ton of fuel and generate a significant amount of CO2 emissions."
The cruise ship industry maintains it is highly regulated and has taken steps to install advanced water- and air-pollution controls.
But Keever said despite hundreds of industry violations, the EPA has done little to enforce protections for coastal communities.
Corporate transparency played a large role in the cruise ship ratings. Companies that fully disclose their environmental and sustainability practices fared better than those that do not.
The Norwegian-based Hurtigruten, which is developing the first zero-emission cruise ship, won top marks for its openness and environmental efforts.
Keever said the report card can help consumers decide if a cruise is the right kind of vacation for them.
"If the environment and climate are important to you, really take a look and make a decision based on that," said Keever, "instead of just what the industry is putting out as this sort of shine on their industry."
Keever said cruise companies will continue to violate environmental laws without independent observers on-board to ensure water and air quality standards.
The last remaining on-board observation program, the Ocean Rangers out of Alaska, was defunded in 2019.
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Across Pennsylvania and other northern U.S. states, climate change -- from burning oil, coal and methane gas -- is increasing the number of winter days with minimum temperatures above freezing.
The phenomenon is known as "lost winter" and a Climate Shift Index analysis of temperatures showed more than 60% of 28 snow belt states are having at least one additional week of days above freezing.
Shel Winkely, a meteorologist and weather and climate engagement specialist for Climate Central, said winter weather will not be as cold for as long as it used to be.
"Temperatures that are below freezing -- so, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or zero degrees Celsius -- those are important days," Winkely explained. "We found out how many days climate change has taken away overnight lows that are at or below the freezing temperature."
Winkley pointed out when you look at the 30-year average of snowfall for Pennsylvania, cities like Philadelphia now have only a 9% chance of seeing a white Christmas, with Pittsburgh faring a bit better at about 31%.
Winkley emphasized the loss of cold winter days can negatively affect some regions that depend economically on winter sports for recreation and tourism income. He added lost winter days can also contribute to a smaller snowpack, meaning less spring-melt water is available for municipal systems or agricultural operations.
"On the whole, the state, when you take the average over this decade -- again, 2014 to 2023 -- climate change added about 10 days per year above 32 degrees or so above freezing," Winkley reported.
Winkley noted the report does not mean winters are going away but the warming climate is making winters shorter and less intense.
"This doesn't mean that there's not cold, or that we're losing all of the cold," Winkley stressed. "We still have cold that is to be found. It just means that we're losing those classic winters. This isn't the winters that our parents experienced or that our grandparents experienced."
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