And this year’s first release from the Caballo Lake will be an early one on March 13, compared to June 1 last year, said Jesus “Chuy” Reyes, general manager of El Paso Water Improvement District No. 1, headquartered in Clint.

“Because we started late last year, we were able to carry over 232,000 acre feet for this year,” he said. “Then the allocation from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for this year of available water gave us a total of 316,000 acre feet.

“So we have given the farmers a full allotment which is 4 acre feet per acre.”

The early release is particularly good news for cotton farmers.

“They have to irrigate in March so they can plant in April,” Reyes said. “That’s a big deal because of the planting season and the time it takes to germinate cotton.”

Then, the cotton has time to mature and be harvested before fall rains.

The city owns property with water rights in the irrigation district and has an agreement with the district to buy additional water that, in a full-allotment year, provides the city with half of its annual water needs.

With the early release, Reyes cautions hikers, horse riders and four-wheel users to be careful after the release because a few days later, the large flow of water will reach El Paso and quickly fill the Rio Grande River bed.

“The March 13 release will put water in the El Paso vicinity by the 17th,” he said.

In other news, Reyes said the district just received a second $2 million grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to continue the concrete lining of the Riverside Canal in the Lower Valley.

Aerial drone photos of the work underway show the large scale of the project to replace the earthen bed of the large canal with concrete. That keeps significant amounts of water from seeping into the ground – water that can then be used for irrigation instead.

“The first grant was received May of 2019, and the second was just awarded to us this February,” Reyes said. “We will be able to concrete about three miles of the canal with the two grants.

The district has the earthmoving equipment and the trained employees it needs to perform the work in-house rather than hiring an outside company to do it at far greater expense, he said.

“I also have three smaller grants from the Bureau of Reclamation, and one from the Texas Water Development Board,” he said. “Those are for a total of $580,000.

“Three of these grants are going to concrete line the Montoya main canal, the Montoya A canal and the La Union East canal in the Upper Valley.”