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Residents remain wary of rising waters
Published October 14, 2008
Jose Luis Gutierrez is gambling that the Rio Grande will rise no farther.
And for now, Mother Nature and the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) are on his side.
Representatives of the IBWC on Monday repeated their intent to maintain releases of water from Amistad Reservoir at the current rate of 500 cubic meters of water per second.
“This release rate will remain constant . . . until Amistad falls below conservation level,” an IBWC representative told state emergency managers and county officials during a conference call in County Judge Mike L. Fernandez’s office Monday afternoon.
Amistad Reservoir reached a water surface elevation of 1,117 feet, which the IBWC considers “conservation level” on Monday, Sept. 29.
On Monday, IBWC representatives said the water surface elevation of Amistad stood at 1,118.12 feet, 1.12 feet above conservation level.
According to information given county officials during Monday’s conference call, water officials in Mexico are slowing releases from the Luis L. Leon Reservoir into the Rio Conchos, a large river that flows into the Rio Grande at Ojinaga, in the Mexico state of Chihuahua.
The decrease in water flowing into the Rio Grande will in turn give officials in Presidio time to continue stabilizing an earthen levee that has so far kept the Rio Grande from flooding the far west Texas town.
Less water in the Rio Grande also means that the inflow of water into Amistad will slow.
The potential threat of heavy rains from Hurricane Norbert never materialized, but officials are still keeping are wary eye on the weather, especially on cold fronts moving through the area that could increase the potential for rain.
“Our situation here will not change, unless Mother Nature decides to do something different,” Billie Powers, county emergency management coordinator, said after Monday’s conference call.
Powers and Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, whose deputies still maintain a checkpoint on Vega Verde Road, said about 10 households have moved away from the vega temporarily.
“We will continue to monitor the outflows from Amistad Dam, and again, the IBWC has assured us that they will not increase the water release over the 500 cubic meters per second of water they are releasing at the present time,” Jernigan said after Monday’s conference call.
Gutierrez, who has lived in a mobile home on the banks of the Rio Grande for more than a decade, said he and his wife and their two daughters will stay on the vega.
A line of sand bags marks a line in his backyard where the Rio Grande has crept onto his property. But river water covers at least half of his 150-foot-long property.
Gutierrez, a custodian for United Medical Center in Del Rio, said the water has so far only swamped a small work shed and has not compromised his septic system.
“I saw the water over there, and I said maybe it won’t come up higher. I hope it won’t come higher. I hope it won’t,” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez said he has stayed on the vega while many of his neighbors left because he has nowhere else to go.
“I don’t have another place, and I don’t have any money to get another house,” he said.
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