The Forgotten River

The Forgotten River

Twenty-five miles west of a snow-covered Chinati Peak, where the pavement ends for Texas Highway 170, near Candaleria, a buzzard circled in the March sky. Its extended black wings with white trailing edges soared against a mountainous back drop – the Cerros Colorados on the Mexican side of a trickling Rio Grande.

Known as the Forgotten River in this reach of its journey to the Gulf of Mexico, the slim waters of the Rio Grande slither past one of three gauging stations set up between Fort Quitman and Presidio, a one hundred and eighty six mile stretch that showed signs of a bigger flow in its past. The breadth of the river at the Candalaria Gauge is no more than ten feet but the valley width here is probably a thousand. Its been a dry winter, but more importantly, El Paso and Juarez, with a combined population in excess of two million humans, lies 250 miles up stream and suck up nearly every precious molecule of water released from the stingy Elephant Butte Reservoir further upriver in New Mexico.

“The Rio Grande ends in El Paso,” Mike Hill, West Texas Regional Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife, said.

The Rio Grande starts in Colorado, absorbing the spring run-off of melting snow in the Southern Rockies near Silverton. It meanders toward New Mexico where in 1916 the Elephant Butte Dam was built five miles east of Truth or Consequences to provide hydro-electric energy and irrigation water. Under a recently revised agreement, the Elephant Butte Reservoir is required to release more water to Texas. But even under this new agreement, the Forgotten River is likely to remain forgotten and more ditch than river.

“It doesn’t start again until the Rio Conchos flows into it at Ojinaga,” Hill said.

The buzzard wings started to flap again. It seeks food and the next set of air currents to ride. It floats high above the river valley, steely eyed, combing the desert geography for the dead.

The Army Corp of Engineers reports that 101 arroyos feed the Forgotten River reach. Annual rainfall is said to be 14 inches but the closet weather station is in El Paso. The evaporation rate is high especially in the summer where temperatures bake over a hundred degrees for weeks straight and humidity, dried by west winds, can be as little a five per cent in the afternoons.

Salt Cedars also known as Tamarisk cover the rocky valley in a swath of yellow-green. The tree imported from Asia in the 19th century as an ornamental plant and spread nationwide by government programs to contain stream erosion, now devastates the native Cottonwood and Desert Willow trees along the Forgotten River. It’s a thirsty tree too, guzzling water at perhaps twice that of a native.

“The Tamarisk changes the PH of the soil,” Hill said. “It changes the ecosystem. The only way out may be fire or the beetle.”

The salt cedar has no natural predators in the area and so its growth goes unchecked. But the Crete Beetle from Khazakstan has shown promising signs that it can slow the growth of the intrusive tree. Thousands of these beetles are being released into the Forgotten River this year.

“It’ll take three years to get hard results on the beetle’s progress,” Hill said.

More buzzards join the hunting circle above. They swoop and pull up, riding waves of air like a giant roller coaster in the sky.

Farmers on both sides of the river in the fertile El Paso Valley divert water through a myriad of cement canals and flood irrigate their crops. Thirsty pecan groves and alfalfa hug the river on the USA side and on the Mexican side, where labor is cheaper, truck crops such as cantaloupe and onions grow.

“The river is completely plumbed,” Hill said. “It’s one sick puppy.”

One of the goals of Texas Parks and Wildlife in the Big Bend region is to restore the state lands and watersheds to their pre-European form, “1491” as some refer to this condition. Bringing back the Rio Grande may be their biggest challenge.

Last week’s snow has melted from Chinati Peak. A little water has flowed down the San Antonio Valley and into the Forgotten River. Nature may be the only one who remembers.