ELEPHANT BUTTE, N.M.—The Rio Grande Project’s irrigation season is scheduled to end next week when the release of water from Caballo Reservoir will stop.
The Bureau of Reclamation stopped releasing water from Elephant Butte Reservoir on September 16. The release from Caballo Reservoir will stop September 28. The irrigation season will end with a total release of approximately 425,000 acre-feet for the year. Elephant Butte Irrigation District and El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 will both carry over allocation water into the 2016 irrigation season. This irrigation season, which ran from May to September, was an improvement from 2014, which ran from the last week in May to August 22 and had a total release of 303,000. It was a vast improvement from 2013, when the project only released irrigation water for just over a month due to low supplies.
Elephant Butte Reservoir is currently holding approximately 167,000 acre-feet of water, which is eight percent of total storage capacity. Caballo Reservoir is holding more than 26,900 acre-feet. Irrigators on the Rio Grande Project were allocated 59 percent of a full supply this year.
Rio Grande Project water is used to irrigate lands in the Elephant Butte Irrigation District in southern New Mexico, the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 in west Texas, and for delivery to Mexico under the 1906 treaty. Project water is also used for municipal and industrial purposes by the city of El Paso, Texas.
Information from Bureau of Reclamation