Holding out hope on the drying Rio Grande

THE VALLEY – Inside Climate News reports that the year was 1897. Floodwaters from the Rio Grande submerged entire blocks of downtown El Paso. The New York Times described the crash of crumbling houses and the “cries of frightened women and children” on its May 26 front page. The raging river displaced hundreds of people and destroyed scores of adobe homes. In Mexico, the Rio Grande is known as the Rio Bravo — the rough, or wild, river — signifying the force that caused several devastating floods in El Paso and neighboring Ciudad Juárez. Today, these historic floods are hard to imagine. The river channel in El Paso-Juárez now only fills during the irrigation season. Farther downstream, the river is frequently dry in a 200-mile section known as the Forgotten Reach. Inside Climate News documented this remote stretch of the river in July on a flight with the nonprofit Light Hawk. Other than limited flows from springs and creeks, known locally as arroyos, this section of the Rio Grande barely has water.

That’s because reservoirs now harness the flows of snowmelt and monsoon rains that once defined the river and deliver that water to thirsty cities and sprawling farms. Making matters worse, climate change is increasing temperatures and aridification in the desert Southwest. Competition over dwindling water is growing. All that leaves little water to support fish, birds and wetland ecosystems that once thrived along the Rio Grande. But environmental scientists and local conservation advocates say there are opportunities to restore environmental flows — the currents of water needed to maintain a healthy river ecology — on the Rio Grande and its West Texas tributaries. Proponents of environmental flows are restoring tributaries and documenting little-known springs that feed the river. They are working with counterparts in Mexico to overcome institutional barriers. Samuel Sandoval Solis, a professor of water resource management at the University of California Davis and an expert on the Rio Grande, compared this restoration model to a “string of pearls.” “Ultimately, we start connecting these pearls,” he said. “And we start putting it back together.” But to replicate and expand these local initiatives will require more funding and political support on the embattled binational waterway.