El Paso AREC releases bi-weekly report on water conditions
Texas A&M University, in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, has begun Drought Watch, a bi-weekly summation of Rio Grande River water supply conditions. Funding for the report is also provided in part through the Rio Grande Basin Initiative.
The report is being sent by e-mail to the media, irrrigation districts, producers legislators, environmental groups and concerned citizens. Interested people can sign up for the newsletter by contacting Ari Michelsen, resident director of the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center in El Paso, at a-michelsen@tamu.edu.
According to Michelsen, Drought Watch developed because of “the need for better community understanding of our region’s surface water supply conditions and the severity of this river drought.”
Several organizations, including the Bureau of Reclamation and the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, have contributed to the report. It gives current information on snow pack, streamflow forecasts, reservoir levels and actual water allocations produced by several organizations, Michelsen said.
“This is part of our effort to provide this information in a more user-friendly format,” he added.
The 1,900-mile-long Rio Grande originates in Colorado and supports 5 million people in that state, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, he said. Agriculture accounts for up to 90 percent of the water withdrawal from the river, and it is the only source of surface water for much of the region.
