Collaboration leads to water conservation
By Danielle Supercinski, May 2005
Sunny skies and cool weather greeted project participants as they arrived at the fourth annual Rio Grande Basin Initiatives (RGBI) Conference, April 12-14, 2005, in Alpine, Texas. It was a productive week that provided numerous discussions on local water issues, agency reports, Task Group breakout sessions and concurrent Task Group reports.
The RGBI is a federally funded effort involving Experiment Station researchers and Extension educators from both Texas and New Mexico. The project partners with a number of other state and federal agencies to enhance water conservation programs. The purpose for the Initiative is to develop and adapt water conservation practices through research and then through Extension education implement water saving practices. Primarily, the project focuses on irrigation efficiency in both agricultural and urban areas.
RGBI project participants from Texas and New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension attended the meeting as well as participants of new projects from the Texas State University System (TSUS) and the University of Texas (UT). This three-day event brought together project administrators, state and federal agency partners from various offices, irrigation district managers, Extension agents and specialists, and Experiment Station researchers.
“A wealth of information is being developed, not only by ourselves, but collaboratively with a number of others involved,” said B. L. Harris, Project Manager of the Rio Grande Basin Initiative and associate director of the Texas Water Resources Institute. “It’s our goal to minimize duplication and encourage collaboration.”
The purpose of this conference was to put all three of the separately funded projects together to discuss methods and ways to collaborate and cooperate, and to prevent unnecessary duplication, Harris said. The conference was also planned to bring the several RGBI Task Groups together for annual reporting of significant accomplishments and joint planning for future efforts. Peer and merit reviews were facilitated for on-going activities and participants were able to discuss partnership opportunities with federal and state agencies for both Texas and New Mexico.
“Obviously one of the principal themes over the past few days and life of the project has been collaboration, collaboration, collaboration,” said Craig Runyan, Water Quality and RGBI Program Coordinator for New Mexico State University (NMSU), during closing remarks. “It’s meaningful and it’s helped a lot. It’s certainly helped our water program at NMSU. Collaboration isn’t something new to us. Institutionally, professionally, career-wise, that’s what we do – we collaborate.”
Runyan said the collaboration between the universities and the interaction with those universities, stakeholders and other agencies has given us an institutional capacity to keep this project relevant.
The RGBI is in its fourth year and continues to go forward, collaborating and working towards the common goal – to conserve the water in the Rio Grande Basin. Without the collaboration of all of the groups involved, this would not be possible, but together it can be done.
