Our Public Service Board has ended up with the responsibility for the storm water system in El Paso.
City council transferred the responsibility to them so that a fee could be added to our water bills and council would not have to face the voters after having raised property taxes to pay for drainage improvements.
The people that I have spoken with tell me that the PSB would rather not have this responsibility. The public is not happy with either the money they are being charged or the condition of the system. Some say that city council made the transfer because they knew that the public would become unhappy with the PSB and that council could use the unhappiness to take direct control over our water utilities and the land that they own and manage. If council had direct control over the issue council would be able to sell the land and make the developers happy. As a group the developers are some of the biggest campaign contributors that council has.
Fixing nature
Now the PSB is indicating that they will have to raise fees so that they can finance $540 million in bonds to fix the drainage problems. Our final bill will be much higher after including interest payments.
One of our regular readers categorized the spending as a waste the other day. He is right. Rain falling on our mountains creates large amounts of water that our facilities cannot adequately handle. It has been that way since the beginning of time.
Why spend that kind of money as a partial fix to a problem that only happens once or twice a year?
There is a problem with water building up on I-10. If for some reason we cannot live with that then there are more economical ways to fix the problem than building a multi-million dollar pumping facility that would only be used occasionally. Past experience with our local utilities leads me to believe that since the pumps would only be used occasionally they probably will not function when we need them.
Could we put “French drains” in the problem areas of the freeway and divert the water under the freeway and let it flow out the south side? Yes there would be water on the south side of the freeway. It would be the very same water that used to flow there before the freeway was built or any drainage pumps were installed.
Some are saying that the $540 million number is just a guess. We simply do not need to spend the money. Nature will find a way to overload anything that we install.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Yay! Somebody gets it! PSB should not have been saddled with this, and they should not now be proposing such an expensive fix for a very old, very occasional problem. I like the idea of the French Drains, and would offer that I seem to recall runoff water finding its way into what used to be the Rio Grande, but is now just a concrete/mud/sand ditch. I say leave the PSB alone to operate as they used to do (very efficiently, by the way), and let the City resume its responsibility! Forget the Developers (they’ll find a way; they always have). And, forget all this tear down/sell off of City assets. Instead, let Council get back to fixing and maintaining our infrastructure, and providing services.
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Money should be used for harvesting rainwater, not flood control.
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Applause!!!!
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Agree with Jerry K. Another round of applause!!!
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I think this is indicative of a growing trend not only in El Paso but one that seems to have permeated government on all levels, up to and including our Nation in general. Instead of looking at an issue in manner that would actually benefit the people in a community for a reasonable amount of money, politicians are taking what may be real (or percieved or invented) problems and asking themselves, “How can we use this to line our own pockets with more money?” This trend, along things like pointing fingers and saying that it’s not MY resonibility or that it’s someone else’s fault and people getting paid bonuses for NOT producing results is absurd. You are right Brutus, we deserve better. My fear is that this snowball built around greed may be too big to stop.
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You make some great points.
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What is to stop a city of managers and unethical politicians, especially from councils in the early and mid 2000’s, from making these decisions to violate your independence and fine, fee, and tax you till you are homeless, when El Pasoans refused to get involved? Why pay any taxes, if you don’t get to use any services or want to use any services available? The EPWU through the PSB takes advantage of this process as much as it can. So they aren’t innocent at all. With special pilot projects that are forced on business as a way to monopolize an testing industry and extort businesses, makes the EPWU run by the PSB a mafia enterprise, and allowed by the City of El Paso and County. The city and county corporations work hand-in-hand with the utilities to place hardship on unblessed businesses who don’t kissup to these entities. They also place a lot of hardship on individuals. Would it cost much less if the no-bid contracts were actually open to all and some of these projects were controlled by small business in a private setting? No…these public corporations do not want any competition nor do they want any small business to succeed, as it would invalidate certain activities and sectors of the public sector. The stormwater project, like the baseball stadium are scams.
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Brutus et al., you are correct: Stormwater happens, though not often.
Just a few points.
By nature’s design, arroyos carry stormwater downhill, across alluvial fans to where water can recharge the aquifer and / or join the Rio Grande. Every time we build a roof, road or sidewalk, we create impervious surfaces that block Mother Nature’s plan and magnify the drainage problems for those living further downstream. Mother Nature always bats last.
Back in 2007, just after the floods of 2006, El Paso tasked EPWU with stormwater management, because city departments and elected officials did not have the expertise or the will to do effective maintenance or future planning for stormwater emergencies (this fact proven by the 2006 flood damage). EPWU did not want the responsibility, but accepted it because they (Ed Archuleta) knew it was the right thing to do. They had the expertise. They are the experts on water management. AND they are not subject to the whims of politicians who will never spend money now for the inevitable future flood.
EPWU estimated the funds needed for stormwater infrastructure and assessed land owners fees based on the amount of impervious surface they owned. That seems fair. BUT, El Pasoans objected because schools and churches with big impervious surfaces (parking lots) would pay too much. So, we exempted schools and churches from any fees. Now, the rest of us property owners must make up the difference.
We El Pasoans made those choices and I don’t mind paying the necessary fee. For the future, let’s stop making any more impervious surfaces.
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Some of us do not think that exempting churches is fair nor constitutional. In any case exempting many of the principal sources of the problem is hardly a good strategy!
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