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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New Mexico farmers finding it more difficult to grow historic crops are taking up conservation techniques to meet the challenge.
Drought, water scarcity, and extreme weather events combine to require growers to adopt new methods and modern tools.
John Idowu, extension agronomist specialist at New Mexico State University, shows farmers how to improve soil health and help control wind erosion. For long term success, he said they need to focus on sustainable, regenerative practices.
"How can I optimize my system and make it more resilient to climate change, to weather changes?" Idowu explained. "Once we have all those things worked out, farmers will tend to stay in business for longer."
Earlier this year, a NOAA satellite captured an image of winds lifting vast amounts of dust and dirt from New Mexico's dry farmlands. Some forecasters compared it to images last seen in the 1930s Dust Bowl.
Plowing agricultural fields annually was a common practice until the Dust Bowl period but in recent decades no-till or low-till farming operations have gained traction.
Bonnie Hopkins Byers, program director for the San Juan County Extension Service, encouraged New Mexico farmers to get a soil analysis and consider adopting the less aggressive approach. She said it could mean they do not need to till every year.
"One of the biggest problems is that people do something because that's the way they've always done it, or because it's the way their parents have done it, or their grandparents," Hopkins Byers acknowledged. "My philosophy has always been if you're going to till something over, till something in."
Intense dust storms known as "haboobs" were originally thought to be confined to Africa's Sudan but are becoming more common in other arid regions such as the Southwest.
Idowu stressed it makes the adoption of regenerative practices more urgent, as topsoil on New Mexico farmland disappears due to drought, land use changes and wind, which he noted has been particularly strong this year.
"The wind has been a major force, especially in the spring, so many days where you couldn't do anything outside because of the wind," Idowu observed. "You have a lot of dust and that means a lot of erosion and that is exactly what you don't like when it comes to crop production."
The New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group formed to help farmers improve their land and livelihoods.
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By Carolyn Beans for Lancaster Farming.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Lancaster Farming-MIT Climate Change Engagement Program-Public News Service Collaboration
At Mountain View Holsteins in Bethel, Pennsylvania, owner Jeremy Martin is always working to make his dairy more efficient.
Currently, he has his sights set on a manure solid-liquid separator. He'd like to use the solid portion of his manure as bedding for his 140 cows and the liquid as fertilizer.
But the project is pricey - he expects the equipment alone will run around $100,000. So Martin hopes to defray the cost through grant funding for dairy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Removing much of the solids from manure reduces the feed for the methane-producing microbes that thrive in the anaerobic conditions of liquid manure.
The approach is just one of many dairy practices now considered "climate-smart" because they could cut production of climate-warming gases.
For Martin, a manure separator wouldn't be possible without a grant.
"Once it's in place and going, I think some of these practices will pay for themselves, but the upfront cost is more than I can justify," he says. "If there's money out there to pay that upfront cost to get started, it makes sense to me to do it."
Across Pennsylvania, dairy farmers are learning more about climate-smart practices and funding opportunities, and weighing whether these changes are really sustainable for their businesses as well as the environment.
The Latest Buzzword
USDA has defined climate-smart agriculture as an approach that reduces or removes greenhouse gas emissions, builds resilience to the changing climate, and sustainably increases incomes and agricultural productivity.
"Before climate-smart was a thing, we called it conservation. We called it stewardship," says Jackie Klippenstein, a senior vice president at Dairy Farmers of America.
Indeed, long before the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations coined the term "climate-smart agriculture" in 2010, Pennsylvania dairy farmers had adopted many of the practices that now fall under the label.
For dairy, climate-smart practices largely include strategies that reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, manure or fields. Tried and true conservation practices like cover cropping and reduced tillage count.
So do newer practices like using the feed additive Bovaer to reduce methane production in a cow's rumen, or precision nitrogen management to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fields.
Paying for Climate-Smart
"Margins are very tight on the dairy farm," says Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence, a public-private partnership to strengthen Pennsylvania's dairy industry. "Some of these (climate-smart practices) are good for the climate, but they don't make good economic sense until they're subsidized."
In 2022, the center joined a Penn State-run program called "Climate-smart Agriculture that is profitable, Regenerative, Actionable and Trustworthy" to provide dairy farmers with funds for switching to climate-smart practices.
CARAT was launched with a $25 million USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant, but the future of the Pennsylvania project is in doubt. In April, USDA canceled the partnership program, suggesting that recipients reapply to a new USDA initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers.
Over 60 dairy farmers across Pennsylvania, including Martin, had already applied and been accepted into the first phase of CARAT. This initial phase was intended to help farmers identify the best climate-smart practices for their operations. In the second phase, farmers would have applied for funding to implement those practices. One farmer was already paid for his project before the USDA canceled the partnership program.
"There are fewer funding sources for climate-smart projects than in the last administration. However, private organizations and other entities are funding climate-smart projects," Sebright says. "Depending on what the practice is, (climate-smart) could also be conservation projects. It could be water quality projects."
Sebright suggests that dairy farmers also look for support through state-level funding, such as Pennsylvania's Resource Enhancement and Protection program, which offers tax credits for implementing practices that benefit farms and protect water quality.
Pennsylvania dairy farmers can also contact their county conservation districts to ask about funding opportunities for climate-smart projects, says Amy Welker, a project manager and grant writer for Pennsylvania-based Jones Harvesting, which operates Maystone Dairy in Newville and Molly Pitcher Milk in Shippensburg.
In the next year, Jones Harvesting plans to install a methane digester and solid-liquid separator at a site near Maystone Dairy. The digester is funded with an Agricultural Innovation Grant from the state and an Environmental Quality Incentives Program grant from USDA, along with private funds.
There's money out there for farmers who implement climate-smart practices, says Welker. But "you can't just look at one source."
Long-Term Payoffs
Ultimately, for climate-smart projects to make economic sense, they must continue paying for themselves long after the initial investment. One major goal of the USDA's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program was to develop markets where farmers adopting these practices could earn a premium.
Some dairy farmers might see that return in the carbon market. National checkoff organization Dairy Management Inc. and its partners have pledged to shrink the industry's net greenhouse gas production to zero by 2050. There are growing opportunities for companies working toward that goal in the dairy supply chain to pay farmers for their contributions.
Early last year, Texas dairy farmer Jasper DeVos became the first to earn credits through the livestock carbon insetting marketplace. DeVos earned carbon credits by reducing methane emissions with a feed protocol that included the feed additive Rumensin. Dairy Farmers of America then purchased those credits through Athian, a carbon marketplace for the livestock industry.
Increased Efficiency
Even without direct monetary payoff, many farmers who adopt climate-smart practices reap rewards in improved efficiency and productivity.
"When you look at climate-smart, you also have to look at what's farm smart," Sebright says. She suggests that farmers choose practices that benefit their farms, not just the climate.
A farmer might decide to put a cover and flare system on a manure pit, not only because it reduces methane emissions but also because it keeps rainwater out of the pit and reduces the number of times each year the pit must be emptied.
Andy Bollinger of Meadow Spring Farm in Lancaster County has been running a manure separator since 2009. The liquid fertilizes his fields, and a portion of the solids becomes bedding for his cows.
He estimates the system saves him at least $20,000 a year in bedding costs.
"We put a fresh coating of it onto the stalls that our cows lay in every day and scrape the old stuff out," says Bollinger, who is also the vice president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania. "It seems to work quite well, and it saves us from buying other bedding products."
No-till farming is also a cost saver because it reduces field passes with equipment, says James Thiele of Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot, which has been 100% no-till for at least six years. The practice saves him money on fuel and herbicides.
"You're saving your environment, and you're also saving green," he says.
But Thiele questions whether some other climate-smart practices like methane digesters would be practical for his farm, which has 75 to 80 cows.
"I don't know if it'd be worth it for somebody as small as I am," he says.
"I think over the next few years, we'll rapidly see (climate-smart) tools become more available, and we'll see more organizations like DFA talking to our small to mid-sized farmers to make sure they understand they've got a place in this, they can benefit from it, and the practices and tools are affordable to them as well," Klippenstein says.
Weighing Climate-Smart
Many dairy farmers wonder whether some of the practices championed as climate-smart will really support their businesses.
Donny Bartch of Merrimart Farms in Loysville has adopted environmental practices from cover cropping to a manure management plan.
"I want to protect the environment. I want to keep my nutrients here on the farm and be sustainable for another five generations," Bartch says. "But we have to make sure that we're making the right decisions to keep the business going. And to do some of these (climate-smart) practices, the only way they pencil out is to have those subsidies."
There is also frustration with a system that rewards climate-smart improvements made today without acknowledging the contributions of farmers who were climate-smart before anyone put a name on it.
"You come around and want to start rewarding people for doing these things. You really need to start with the ones that have been doing it for a long time, but that's really not what happens," says Jim Harbach of Schrack Farms in Loganton, whose farm has been no-till for 50 years.
Climate-smart grant money and carbon credits are typically awarded for the implementation of new practices.
"It's just the unfortunate way that all of the policies and regulations were written," Sebright says. "What I would say is, if you do a climate-smart plan, maybe there are practices or things you can do to enhance or support or take what you're doing a step further."
Scientific Measurements on Real Farms
Some dairy farmers also want to know more about how climate-smart practices will affect their farms before jumping in.
Steve Paxton remembers participating in a government program to improve timber over 50 years ago on his family dairy, Irishtown Acres in Grove City. His family members were paid to climb up into their white pines and saw off many of the bottom branches.
The goal was to create a cleaner log. Instead, more sunlight shown through, which caused grape vines to climb up and topple the trees.
"The bottom line is, there was research done, it looked good, but it hadn't had enough time to follow through and see just really what the end results would be," Paxton says.
When Paxton sees estimates of how some practices might reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, he wonders how much of that research has been tested on actual dairies.
"I think some of it now is just kind of a textbook estimate of what's happening," he says.
More meaningful data is needed to show how climate-smart practices reduce greenhouse gases on individual dairies, Sebright says.
As part of the CARAT program, Penn State researchers planned to place greenhouse gas sensors on a dozen dairies and test how much greenhouse gas production falls as farmers experiment with different practices. The researchers intended to then use that data to build models that predict how those practices may affect emissions on other farms. They will still measure emissions this spring on one farm that is experimenting with a new approach for spreading manure in fields of feed crops.
"The real goal of (CARAT) is to have research that says, if you put a cover and flare (manure storage system) on a 500-cow dairy, this is how greenhouse gas emissions will change," Sebright says. "Or if you use Bovaer on a 90-cow herd, here's how this will affect greenhouse gas emissions."
Martin of Mountain View Holsteins has his own personal beliefs about where a dairy farmer's responsibilities to the planet begin and end. But from a business perspective, he feels compelled to adopt climate-smart practices because he expects the industry will eventually require them.
"Climate concerns are coming whether I'd like it or not," he says. "So my thought is, I might as well get started on it while there's funding to do it."
Carolyn Beans wrote this article for Lancaster Farming.
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Oregon's new state budget cuts funding for programs intended to protect residents from extreme weather and make renewable energy more accessible.
Climate justice advocates said it is a major setback after years of progressive climate policies.
Ben Brint, senior climate program director for the Oregon Environmental Council, is disappointed to lose funding for the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, which supports a variety of projects tailored to communities, including microgrids and solar storage.
"We felt legislators didn't fund climate resilience programs while fires are raging, people's houses are burning down and the state has already experienced record heat waves in June," Brint pointed out. "Legislators don't see we are in an actual climate emergency and chose inaction."
Brint said the grant program aimed to help low-income, rural and communities of color, those most impacted by climate disasters. Lawmakers attributed the cuts to budget shortfalls and uncertainty over federal funding.
Joel Iboa, executive director of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, said the Community Resilience Hub program, which creates networks as well as physical places to protect people from extreme cold, heat and smoke also lost funding this session. He argued the hubs are effective because communities design them to meet their unique needs.
"Whether it be a place to plug in your phone or a place to go get diapers or get an air conditioner or whatever your community may need," Iboa outlined. "Depending on what's going on."
A heat pump program for rental housing, aimed at making energy-efficient heating and cooling more affordable, was also cut this session.
Brint added he realizes legislators have to make tough decisions about how to fund health care and housing but emphasized climate change is connected to those issues.
"When we're talking about heat pumps or the C-REP program, we're talking about people's health and livelihoods and saving lives in the face of climate fueled disaster," Brint stressed.
Brint added since climate change is not going away, the movement to push for climate resilience will not either.
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