The census data for the County of El Paso has been released, and it’s screwy.
In the data headed Population by Race, Ethnicity, shows that the White (race) population has decreased by more than half, from 656,994 to 313,741. Meanwhile, our Hispanic or Latino (ethnicity) population has increased from 658,133 to 715,351, or 8.7%.
However, people of two or more races jumped from a paltry 19,705 in 2010 to 310,267 in 2020, an increase of 1474.6%.
That astonishing jump obviously recognizes that most Mexicans are of both European and American Indian descent. But where did that awareness come from? New Census Bureau parameters? Public schools?
Between 2010 and 2020, the population of the County of El Paso increased by only 8.1%. Over ten years. Less than one percent a year. For the County. I’m sure that the City’s numbers will be lower, as El Pasoans flee the punitive property tax rates in the City of El Paso for the sexy bedroom communities of San Eli, Tornillo, and Moon City.
The County of El Paso increased by only 8.1%. It is growing. Lots of places wish they had 8% growth over 10 years. I checked out my home turf in Wisconsin up near Green Bay and they are doing cartwheels on the beach over an 8.4% population growth compared to 4% overall for Wisconsin.
Did you really want to grow 15% or 20%? There’s only so much water to go around, ya know, though today that seems irrelevant. I almost got washed off the mountain Thursday night coming home from Alamo. Won’t last.
I’m happy to see the stagnation, but our local leaders are counting on population growth to pay for their grand schemes. Remember when they pitched the QoL projects as a cure for Brain Drain? It ain’t happening. So our tax bills grow every year. I’m tired of paying for amenities for the leisure class. Let the billionaire class pay for their own toys.
Rich; 8% is not stagnation, it is healthy growth. Water will be the constraining resource in future years but by then we taxpayers will have been wrung dry, too. Good article in El Paso Matters that interviews UTEP environmental scientist, Alex Mayer, regarding the future of water here.
https://elpasomatters.org/2021/08/13/were-starting-to-be-concerned-about-the-health-impacts-on-people-a-qa-on-regional-climate-change/
Meanwhile, enjoy the monsoon. My friends in Colorado and Oregon are baking in heat that we should be receiving instead of floods. The times they are a changin’ .
At some point EL Paso will have to stop growing…will it be standing room only, or some earlier benchmark? Would El Paso be a better place if 2 million people lived here? (And yeah, where would they get the water?) GROWTH cannot be the driving force for human society very much longer, if we want human society to survive.