Since August 15, El Paso Water has been pumping raw sewage into the Rio Grande. Ten million gallons a day.
El Paso water has been doing all it can to fix the broken pipes that caused this international ecological catastrophe.
Except working Sunday. Nope, they weren’t working Sunday.
Nuh uh.
In news completely unrelated to the engineering malfeasance that produced this debacle, El Paso Water Vice President of Operations and Technical Services Alan Shubert retired earlier this month.
And in other news, water customers face rate increases for 2022. From EPWater.org:
A 9% increase in water rates, a 13% increase in wastewater rates and 9% increase in stormwater fees would help El Paso Water reinforce infrastructure overdue for upgrades and expand systems to sustain city growth, EPWater officials told the Public Service Board.
If the city’s population is only growing 1 percent a year, and our water rates are increasing by more than 9 percent, it looks like water customers are subsidizing the developers.
Don’t forget the property tax increase due largely to rising appraisal values. My taxes are up 6% over 2020. Interestingly, none of these proposals has much to do with water scarcity that, this being a desert, is a fact of life. Like what are we going to do when the well runs dry?