Rio Grande Project

State: New Mexico and Texas
Region: Upper Colorado Basin Region

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Rio Grande Project History (83 KB)

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Construction

Construction was begun in 1906 on Leasburg Diversion Dam and Canal. The dam and 6 miles of canal were completed in 1908. Construction of Elephant Butte Dam was begun in 1908 but progress was delayed when difficulty in obtaining reservoir land developed. Construction of the dam began again in 1912 and was completed in 1916; storage operation began in January 1915. The Franklin Canal was constructed in 1889-1890 by El Paso Irrigation Company, was purchased by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1912, and was enlarged in 1914-1915. Additional project works, consisting of Mesilla Diversion Dam and the East Side and West Side Canals, Percha Diversion Dam and Rincon Valley Canal, and an extension of Leasburg Canal were constructed during 1914-1919. In 1917-1918, contracts were entered into for the construction of distribution laterals and a drainage system in addition to storage and diversion works. A critical seepage condition had developed because of the rising ground water table, and construction of the drainage system, which was began in 1916, was expedited. During 1918-1929, reconstruction and extension of old community ditches, and construction of new laterals to form a complete irrigation distribution and drainage system were in progress. Improvements have been added from time to time since 1930. Caballo Dam was included as a flood control unit in the Rio Grande Rectification Project and part of its cost was allocated to that purpose. It made year-round power generation at Elephant Butte Dam possible and part of the cost was allocated to that purpose, but it also provided replacement for storage lost at Elephant Butte due to silt deposition. This dam was built in 1936-1938, followed by construction of the Elephant Butte Powerplant in 1938-1940. Construction of the power transmission system, begun in 1940, was completed in 1952. The project is divided into some large family-owned and many small farming units. Principal crops are cotton, alfalfa, vegetables, pecans, and grain. Elephant Butte Reservoir has a surface area of 36,897 acres at the conservation pool water surface elevation of 4,407.0 ft. Located midway between Albuquerque, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas., in scenic semidesert mountainous terrain, it is popular throughout the entire Southwest for boating, fishing, and swimming. Cabin sites, boat rental, and fishing tackle are available. Caballo Reservoir has a surface area of about 11,500 acres. In rough desert terrain 17 miles south of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, it provides an all-year recreation program of picnicking, boating, and fishing. For specific information about any of these recreation sites, click on the name below. http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=99 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=100 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=104 The Rio Grande Project has provided an accumulated $29,973,000 in flood control benefits from 1950 to 1999. At the twentieth century`s first light, just as the Rio Grande Project reached completion, the mythic legend of the American West was beginning to wrap its two fists around the collective national conscious. Over the succeeding decades, the words `Rio Grande` still inspires images to most Americans of badlands, badmen, and the last stand of the law before crossing the United States-Mexico border. The reality of the Rio Grande Project demonstrated federal involvement in the development of the modern Western United States. Claiming and controlling this storm-water stream was a dream of engineers and settlers before the Bureau of Reclamation was ever imagined. A little more than a decade into the twentieth century, the recently minted U.S. Reclamation Service built the Rio Grande Project and succeeded in capturing spring runoff and summer rains, created one of the world`s largest man-made lakes, and led the first international civil engineering effort to allocate water between the United States and Mexico. Unfortunately, the people living along the river still wait for the harmony planners saw as the ultimate benefit of the Rio Grande Project. For people living on both sides of the border, the Rio Grande is a portal. It can be a path to employment, or it can lead down a road to oblivion, or death. Historically, the river is a turnstile, as Indian planters, Spanish conquistadors, Mexican tenant farmers and migrants, and Anglo homesteaders all have contributed and taken away during each of their intervals of control. In a place where there has been four centuries of confrontation, Reclamation wrote the first page of the Rio Grande`s modern chapter. The Bureau`s mission along the Rio Grande was not to erect paradise, but to introduce a measure of productivity where turmoil has often been the norm. Never a peaceful crossroads, the valleys of the Rio Grande, stand as islands of green growth bracketed by the stony soil, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes of the surrounding desert. Running linear to the Rio Grande River in New Mexico and Texas with a maximum width of 4.5 miles, the Project extends 165 miles north and forty miles southeast of El Paso, Texas. The water system for this narrow oasis features Elephant Butte and Caballo Dams, six diversion dams, 141 miles of canals, 462 miles of laterals, 457 miles of drains, and a hydroelectric plant. The Rio Grande flows through narrow gorges requiring diversion and canal systems for three valleys, the Rincon, Mesilla, and El Paso. This necklace of fertility blankets 178,000 acres in Dona Ana, Sierra and Socorro Counties in south-central New Mexico and the City and County of El Paso in west Texas. Sixty percent of Project lands are in New Mexico and the remaining 40 percent are in Texas. Supplemental drainage provides water for 18,000 acres in the Hudspeth County (Texas) Conservation and Reclamation District. An international treaty between Mexico and the United States guarantees an annual allowance of 60,000 acre-feet of water for diversion to Mexico at the city of Juarez.1 Over millennia, mud, silt and alluvial soils gathered and recessed along the banks of the Rio Grande. This alluvium supported sagebrush and mesquite for centuries before modern comprehensive irrigation designs introduced alfalfa, cotton, and grazing cattle. The source of modern irrigation in the project is Elephant Butte Dam and Reservoir some 124 miles north of El Paso, four miles east of Truth of Consequences, New Mexico, and a half mile from a lava capped hill for which it is named. Elephant Butte`s companion structure, the Caballo Dam and Reservoir, is 25 miles downstream. The lower Rio Grande offers a 247 day growing season where temperatures can shoot up to 111 degrees fahrenheit, and plummet to -16 degrees. Two-thirds of the annual precipitation of 7.8 inches is packed into the late summer and early fall when drought years have been sometimes suddenly interrupted by a torrent.2 The Spanish Empire`s entradas for colonization and conversion first made their way up the Rio Grande led by explorer Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca in 1536. Wandering inland in search of the mythic, `Seven Golden Cities of Cibola,` Cabeza de Vaca and his band never found gold, but they did uncover an unexpected surprise. The conquistadors and priests found near the present site of Juarez, Mexico, Pueblo Indians irrigating and cultivating almost 30,000 acres of maize, beans and calabashes. The Spanish arrival instigated a hundred year test of wills between the Europeans and the Pueblos. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, a mission established by fathers at El Paso del Norte, (modern Juarez), began schooling the Indians in more advanced methods of growing crops, aided by water provided by the Acequia Madre (Main Canal). In 1680, an Indian revolt drove the Spanish and Christianized Indians south from New Mexico to present Juarez, Mexico, and Yselta, Texas. Don Diego De Vargas began the reconquest of New Mexico twelve years later, and the Spanish influence over the Rio Grande was cemented into place. In the following 150 years, up to 40,000 acres of land were tilled along the river, most on what would later become Mexico. Once Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexican settlers dug modest canal and diversion structures, and built a loose boulder dam. On the left bank of the river, Juan Maria Ponce de Leon in 1827 found modern El Paso. Almost immediately, colonists diverted water from above the boulder dam with no complaint from the residents of Juarez. At the close of the nineteenth century, 25,000 people lived on the U.S. and 25,000 on the Mexican sides of the Rio Grande.3 The New Mexican story on the lower Rio Grande began when Don Juan de O?ate led a party of colonizing Christians up the Rio Grande. O?ate`s expedition first inhabited northern New Mexico in 1598. The events leading to development along the lower Rio Grande can be traced to 1805, when the Mexican government gave Don Juan Garcia a land grant near modern-day Las Cruces. Garcia`s deed contained most of the land where the Rio Grande Project would unfold a century later.4 Relations between the United States and Mexico simmered and eventually boiled over in the Mexican War of the late 1840s. The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 ended the fighting between Mexico and the United States, and the U.S. took the northern frontier of Mexico as the war`s principal prize. However, settlers from the rest of America did not rush into west Texas and the New Mexico territory for a generation. Sparked by the construction of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad from Albuquerque to El Paso in 1880, a few individuals populated the land along its line. Concurrently, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad track expanded through the San Luis Valley in Colorado. By the mid-1890s, at the headwaters of the Rio Grande, settlers in southern Colorado constructed extensive irrigation systems to reclaim thousands of acres of land.5 The United States Geological Survey, (USGS), first investigated the Rio Grande in 1888. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, few streams in the West were studied more than was the Rio Grande above El Paso. During the 1890s, a series of official reports confirmed what was common knowledge along the borderlands -- the river was going dry by the time it reached El Paso. Incoming settlers and irrigated farming at the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado, and settlements in central New Mexico, meant more dry summers for southern New Mexico and west Texas. In Colorado, an estimated 925 ditches were drawing water out of the Rio Grande before it left the state. In 1896, an International Boundary Commission report estimated the flow of the Rio Grande had decreased by 200,000 acre-feet a year since 1880. By the time it reached El Paso, one sardonic wit suggested the Rio Grande was the `only river with its bottom side up.`6 Different types of storage works were proposed and discussed among the citizens, governments, and businesses of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Instead of working together, conflicting interests, notably Mexico`s claims for loss of water based on ancient prior right, prevented any of the plans to progress. At the turn of the century, the Rio Grande Dam & Irrigation Co. (RGD&IC) proposed to build a low dam with a limited storage capacity to serve only a few subscribers with no surplus diverted to Mexico. The lack of regard for Mexican water claims was shaping into an international crisis. One New Mexican settler wrote, the Mexican government`s claim to the water was `so insistently urged as to cause some embarrassment to our Department of State.` The State Department blocked RGD&IC with lawsuits, before the Supreme Court ruled against the dam promoters. RGD&IC`s work halted in April, 1897, because of the burdens of too much litigation, an inability to receive construction permits, and dwindling funds.7 As the State Department shut out the RGD&IC in the courts, a door opened for the possibility of a federally built dam. The birth of the United States Reclamation Service (USRS) in June of 1902 propelled construction of a storage system on the Rio Grande to the top of the Federal government`s `must do` list. Surveys of the bedrock in south-central New Mexico began in March, 1903, and a year later, the USRS settled on a site near Engle, New Mexico, where it would build a dam accomplishing `much for Mexico, and a great deal more for the United States.`8 Below the conical peak of Elephant Butte, the Reclamation Service conceived a reservoir 175 feet deep at its lower end, and 40 miles long. With a storage capacity of 2 million acre feet the dam could furnish 600,000 acre feet a year of water for irrigation. Armed with a library of reports and a drafting table piled with designs, Reclamation captured the Rio Grande, but the voices of legislation and diplomacy still had to speak -- in both Spanish and English. In 1905, it seemed all branches, and every agency of the federal government, wanted a dam to cross the Rio Grande. Congress ratified the construction of the Engle Dam on February 25, 1905. Later that year, both the Elephant Butte Water Users` Association, based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the El Paso Valley Water Users` Association, (later the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1), headquartered in El Paso, were formed. President of the El Paso association, Felix Martinez, led the drive for a federal storage project. Martinez was a important figure in El Paso`s financial and political scenes, and through his newspaper, the El Paso Daily News, supported a Federal project on the Rio Grande as early as 1899. An active 1905 concluded on December 2, when Interior Secretary Ethan A. Hitchcock authorized the project. Six months later, the authority of the Reclamation Act was extended to Texas on June 12, 1906. Previously, the state of Texas owned all its public land, exempting Reclamation from constructing irrigation projects. Two weeks later, the government signed a contract with the two water users` associations. The Project would never be a success unless the United States and Mexico found a mutually agreeable water diversion plan. Negotiations over the Rio Grande produced the first civil engineering works to affect international allocation of water between the two nations. Under the terms of the treaty signed on May 21, 1906, Mexico received 60,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Rio Grande. In return, Mexico waived all claims to the river above the town of Fort Quitman, Texas, and all demands for past damages from water shortages. Providing initial seed money, Congress on March 4, 1907 appropriated $1 million under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior toward Project completion. The million dollars provided a start to a proposition estimated to eventually cost $7.2 million.9 If one man can claim both parentage and mid-wifery of Elephant Butte Dam, it would be the second Director of the Reclamation Service, Arthur Powell Davis. Few men in Reclamation history have personally discovered the location of a future damsite, named the spot, and many years later, spoken at the dam`s dedication. Before Reclamation`s birth, the USGS sent the forty-one-year-old bespectacled and studious-looking Davis to lead a reconnaissance party in to the wilds of the territory of New Mexico to survey potential damsites. Davis`s inspiration for the dam`s eventual name came soon after his arrival at Engle, New Mexico. Recalling that day in April 1902, Davis said, `I had never seen this portion of the river, but as soon as I came in sight of the mountain there I at once said that that was Elephant Butte, as it looks so much like an elephant`s head.`10 A month later in his report to Washington, Davis stated that due to upstream diversions, the Rio Grande`s yearly flow was impossible to predict. Further, the river conveyed so much silt, a large, deep reservoir was necessary to minimize evaporation. Also, a structure would have to provide ample capacity for holding surplus water over from wet to dry years. Like an illness, silt could shorten the life of any storage project. In spite of all the problems of getting the Rio Grande Project off the ground, control of the sediment flowing in the water quickly became the `most difficult and serious obstacle` in designing a reservoir. Despite whatever troubles lay ahead, one wishful thinker predicted this operation would be `more than a reclamation project. It is a great opportunity for constructive statesmanship and empire building.` Consulting Engineer Louis C. Hill supervised the team responsible for the engineering and political success of the Project. Hill served from the commencement of operations until March 1, 1915. Homer J. Gault was the original construction engineer, succeed by E. H. Baldwin in October, 1912. Designing Engineer Fred Teichman oversaw the execution of the dam and outlet works.11 In the Reclamation Service`s original plans, the storage dam stood 185 feet. However, following Davis` report, the height of the dam and capacity of the reservoir were both increased. Raising the dam`s height meant the construction of a secondary earth and rock-fill embankment, and a more expensive spillway. First crews dug down a hundred feet below the riverbed to remove debris and ensure the stability of the foundation. During that excavation, crews dealt with cramped spaces and the danger of falling rock. At the time of the dam`s completion, the dam rose 306 feet above the foundation.12 The Leasburg Diversion Dam was the first structure completed on the Project. It was built 62 miles north of El Paso at Leasburg, New Mexico, to replace the previous diversion dam which was `an obstruction built of poles, interwoven with twigs with stones for ballast.` For years a community ditch at the head of the upper Mesilla Valley had served Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans. Work commenced on the new diversion November 20, 1906. Designed as a 10 foot high, 600 foot long rubble concrete weir, with a 1,500 foot earthen dike extension at the dam`s west end, Reclamation built the weir is built on piling driven 20 to 25 feet into the silt of the riverbed. A reinforced concrete apron, 23 feet wideand two feet thick, directs water flowing over the weir away from the dam. The Leasburg Diversion Dam, built at a construction cost of $210,000, diverted its first water in 1908. The 13.7 mile long canal with an initial capacity of 625 cubic feet per second (cfs) provided water to 31,600 acres. The Picacho Flume, nine miles south of Leasburg Diversion Dam, is a 502 foot long steel truss structure carrying water on the Leasburg Canal over the Rio Grande. Two support structures, the Picacho North Dam and Picacho South Dam, were both added to the system in the early 1950s. The two zoned earthfill dams are on the north and south branches of the Picacho Arroyo, five miles northwest of Las Cruces.13 The rapid mobilization of the Leasburg system was soon overshadowed by a showdown over the Elephant Butte Dam. Haggling over money threatened to halt Reclamation from proceeding with the dam and reservoir. In the spring of 1909, the Reclamation Service and the Victorio Land & Cattle Co. of Bakersfield, Calif., could not agree on the value of 33,640 acres of land composing three-quarters of the proposed Elephant Butte Dam, Reservoir, and allocated railroad right-of-way. Victorio Land & Cattle asked $600,000, while Reclamation offered $65,000. The standoff between both parties halted work on May 1, 1909. A series of prolonged condemnation hearings over the next three years in a New Mexico court resulted in the land company receiving $200,000 for 30,000 acres.14 In the three years while lawyers and landowners argued, Reclamation built the Elephant Butte workers camp, and 12.8 miles of railroad to connect with the Santa Fe Railroad at Engle. Surveys for the railroad began in 1908, with track first laid in December 1910 and the final spike driven in early 1911. The train carried supplies to the camp from Engle three times a week. The rolling stock included two sight-seeing cars for visitors interested in watching progress on the dam. Workers also built 19 miles of roads and a 300 foot highway bridge across the Rio Grande.15 Rubble concrete with a smooth concrete face, better known as Masonry, served as the surface of the Elephant Butte Dam. The dam`s first concrete was poured on June 3, 1913. From that day forward all operations were timed to produce the greatest possible pouring of concrete in the shortest amount of time. Due to the wild fluctuations of temperatures, engineers believed the seams would open over time in the dam`s foundation. The Reclamation Service decided to conduct masonry operations paralleling the foundation excavation. Trying to avoid cracks in the dam`s upstream face, a coat of commercial mortar known as `Gunite` was first shot out of a cement gun in March 1914. A team of six men sprayed the oatmeal-thick material through a 1.25 inch rubber hose. A mixture of 48 per cent pulverized sandstone obtained from three nearby quarries was blended with 52 per cent commercial Portland cement combined to form the 611,000 cubic yards finishing the completed dam.16 Fixed 350 feet above the heads of those clearing the foundation and pouring concrete in the riverbed, a three cable system carried concrete to the steadily rising dam. The cableway spanned 1,400 feet, and delivered an average of 125 1.75 cubic foot buckets of concrete during an eight-hour shift. Power was provided by a 300 horsepower electric motor.17 The dam`s original height was 306 feet with its crest spanning 1,674 feet, a base width of 228 feet narrowing to a top width of 18 feet. Concrete lampposts stand watch over the dam`s downstream side along the 16 foot wide road at the dam`s crest. The straight gravity, thick concrete design did not initiate any radical departures in engineering practices common in the early twentieth century. During construction, the Rio Grande was diverted through a lumber flume built on a bench excavated on the right bank. Concrete replaced timber once the flume crossed the dam site and was incorporated into the dam. In the summer of 1914, on the upstream side of the dam, blocks of masonry about 100 feet long of different heights grew up from the riverbed. Contraction joints between the blocks provided frequent vertical off-sets to discourage the passage of water. A block grew to a height of 20 feet before the contraction joints were coated with heavy oil to prevent adhesion, then a new block started against it. This confined expansion and contraction from changes in temperature, avoiding cracks in the dam`s face. Teams of four and five men spaded the concrete against the forms and sides of imbedded large rocks, known as plumstones. When a layer of concrete reached sufficient thickness, plumstones were embedded in the material with the aid of a derrick. Eventually, plumstones accounted for 15 percent of the dam`s volume. While construction on the main dam proceeded, work continued a mile to the west on the Elephant Butte Dike. The Dike plugs a saddle in the spur of hills running northwesterly across from the main structure. The earth and rock fill dike is 59 feet high and 2,000 feet long and cost $266,086 to complete.18 The dam`s spillway evolved rather than soared in one rapid movement. The crest and gate outlets were finished in 1916, but construction on the transition channel and downstream chute concluded six years later. The delay occured, in part, when engineers discovered better foundation rock, and a potential savings, if the chute was rerouted.19 As Elephant Butte went into service, other important diversion works on the Project formed arteries moving water irrigate to lands. Reconstruction of the Franklin Canal led the way, followed by the construction of the Mesilla Diversion Dam, the East and West Side Canals, the Percha Diversion Dam, and the Rincon Valley Canal. The oldest feature in service, the Franklin Canal, was originally constructed by the El Paso Irrigation Company, a private firm, in 1889. Reclamation acquired the canal in 1912, and it presently extends 31 miles with an initial capacity of 325 cfs to cover 18,500 acres of the upper El Paso Valley. Twenty-five miles below Elephant Butte, the reinforced concrete Percha Diversion Dam is 350 feet long, required 15 months of work before its completion in 1918, and cost approximately $139,000. The dam`s base is set six feet below the riverbed, and when raised, eight radial or `Taintor` gates lift the level of the river six feet above its normal elevation. Rincon Valley Canal travels twenty-seven miles southeast from Percha Diversion Dam with a capacity of 350 feet to water 16,260 acres in the Rincon Valley. The canal was completed in 1919.20 Although more than a year`s work remained before completion of the Elephant Butte Dam, by January 1915 farmers on the Project received their first deliveries of water. The visually intriguing Mesilla Diversion Dam diverted water into the East and West Side Canals for 54,000 acres in the central and southern Mesilla Valley. Mesilla Diversion Dam is a low concrete weir, twenty-two feet high and 303 feet long carrying a highway bridge. The striking feature of this dam are the thirteen Taintor gates installed on the concrete crest, extending the full length of the dam. The bridge is buttressed by 13 concrete spans giving the entire structure a clean, linear design. The East Side Canal runs for 13.5 miles with an initial capacity of 300 cubic feet per second (cfs), and was completed to its current specifications in 1919. Brought into service a year later, the West Side Canal, reached its present length of 27.9 miles in 1920, and boasts of a capacity of 650 cfs. Almost 33 miles southeast of Las Cruces, the West Side Canal crosses under the river in the Montoya Siphon. The siphon travels an additional 468 feet.21 The first fifteen years of the twentieth century were the lowest point in relations between the United States and Mexico since the Mexican War. The Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910, just as Reclamation was progressing on construction of the Elephant Butte campsite. Events for six years were contained within the borders of Mexico, until March 9, 1916, when only 60 miles southwest of El Paso, a band led by Pancho Villa crossed the border and killed 16 American citizens in Columbus, New Mexico. Nine days later, on March 18, a letter from Acting Chief of Construction L.J. Charles, to Construction Engineer E.H. Baldwin, detected a ripple of tension in camp resulting from Villa`s activities. Charles wrote, `Conditions on the border are beginning to be felt in the labor here. There is no danger of trouble unless some drunken specimen of either race should start it; then it is difficult to tell just where it would end.` Fortunately, much of the work on the dam concluded by the time of Villa`s raid.22 Anxiety between the Rio Grande`s Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans existed before the Project was imagined, but the opportunity for steady work exacerbated relations between all groups. Reclamation decided Elephant Butte would be completed by force account to prevent delays common with contractors. The secretary of El Paso`s Central Labor Union, E.D. Skinner, feared a large number of American citizens would be `begging for food on our streets` while the contractors would hire `cheap, imported, foreign paupers` from across the border. Skinner, and his membership, were in frequent contact with the state`s Senators and the Secretaty of Labor, William B. Wilson throughout 1914. The growing dissatisfaction among Anglo workers prompted Director Frederick H. Newell to look into the matter. Newell wrote to Texas Senator Morris Sheppard, advocating any man, `claiming American citizenship, whether speaking English or not, is eligible for employment, as it is obviously impossible to discriminate between the different classes of Americans. The only discrimination exercised has been to employ local labor and teams of water users as much as possible.`23 Reclamation staffers met with the Central Labor Union in El Paso to clear up the `misconception of our operations and methods,` but resentment against Mexican labor continued throughout construction. The jobs workers of both nationalities wanted paid $1.25 to $1.50 a day for concrete, mixing, placing and finishing jobs. Skilled laborers made from $2.00 to $2.50. Jobs on the damsite`s periphery, like blacksmith, plow driver, teamster, and carpenter, averaged from $1.25 to $4.00 per day. An aggregate of twelve hundred men were employed at Elephant Butte from 1914 to 1916. The overall population of the camps fluctuated between 2,500 to 3,000. The arena of chaos that is the border between Mexico and the United States, Reclamation safely claimed almost two-thirds of the population of the Elephant Butte camp were of `Mexican stock.` Work went on day and night, with Sundays reserved for rest, except the unfortunate few assigned to repair machinery. After sunset, a lighting system cast the laborers` long shadows against the canyon and concrete.24 In a time and a place divided by a border, culture and language, it followed the laborers` camps were segregated. The `Upper Town` was home to the engineering and office force, featuring two churches and a movie theater. The `Lower Town` housed the foremen, mechanics, laborers. Within the Lower Town existed a further division between the American and Mexican quarters. A Mexican family ran their own boarding house, furnishing meals at a price lower than the 25 cents charged at the Reclamation Service mess. A Service commentator noted the family provided food more agreeable to the Mexican laborers.` The Upper Town`s main office, mess hall, chemical laboratory, and management cottages were of adobe. A one-room school housed ten or twelve children, taught by Chief Engineer Baldwin`s daughter, Mabel. Housing, other structures in the Lower camp were of canvas, wood, adobe, or a combination of the three. Mexican workers and their families in the Lower Town were described as `illy (sic) clothed, and a high percent illy (sic) fed.` Water for the camps and construction was even-handedly distributed from wells sunk in the sands of the river bottom.25 A detailed record of survival in the federal bivouac is found in the reports and articles written by the camp doctor, J. Dale Graham. From 1914, until the dam`s completion two years later, he dealt with and chronicled his attempts to fight disease in a land where communal living was a risky prospect. As measles and diphtheria reached epidemic levels, fourteen people died from a variety of illnesses during Elephant Butte`s construction. Measles, with complications killed many children in the Mexican quarter. Dr. Graham regarded the Mexican population as `well-housed,` but he felt `their method of living. . . did not tend to promote good health.` Drinking the water from a nearby hot springs was discouraged, so a character named `Burro Jim` sold water he gathered from a spring near the town of Williamsburg at a nickle a bucket. The moral and physical well-being of the worker`s town was kept on a tight rein. Exercise was encouraged, and excessive drinking by an employee would result in dismissal. Another continual battle was the removal of stable, human, and kitchen wastes and the flies they would bring. A sanitary officer responsible to Dr. Graham policed the camp daily. Graham defined his role in military terms, `The price of good sanitation is an eternal fight -- a continuous campaign.`26 After four years of non-stop work from 1912 to 1916, the cost of the dam and reservoir came to a little over $5.2 million. Reclamation`s Statistician, C.J. Blanchard, characterized the Rio Grande Project as `The Peacemaker,` upon its completion. He prophesied the dam would end international and interstate bickering over water shortages which `often resulted in personal violence.` Blanchard was correct in so far as the new dam cooled a good deal of friction from any possible international incidents, but the immediate result of the dam`s opening irritated a wound between two groups trying to abide together in this country.27

Plan

Storage for the project is provided in the Elephant Butte and Caballo Reservoirs. Water used for winter power generation at Elephant Butte is held in Caballo Reservoir for irrigation use during the summer. Diversions for project irrigation are made at four points on the Rio Grande below the storage reservoirs. Elephant Butte Dam and Reservoir (originally called Engle Dam) is on the Rio Grande, 125 miles north of El Paso, Texas, can store 2,210,298 acre-feet of water to provide irrigation and year-round power generation. This is a concrete gravity dam 301 feet high and 1,674 feet long including the spillway. It contains 618,785 cubic yards of concrete. The dam was completed in 1916, but storage operation began in 1915. The power system consists of a 24,300-kilowatt hydroelectric powerplant at Elephant Butte Dam. A system consisting of 490 miles of 115-kilovolt transmission line and 11 substations totaling 81,750 kilovolt-amperes, which was developed and operated by the Rio Grande Project until 1977, has been sold to a private electric company. The Caballo Dam and Reservoir are on the Rio Grande 25 miles downstream from Elephant Butte Dam. The dam is an earthfill structure 96 feet high and 4,590 feet long, and has a capacity of 343,990 acre-feet of water. Water discharged from the Elephant Butte Powerplant during winter power generation is impounded at Caballo Dam for irrigation use during the summer. Percha Diversion Dam is on the Rio Grande, 2 miles downstream from Caballo Dam. It diverts water into the Rincon Valley Main Canal. The dam is a concrete ogee weir with embankment wings. The Rincon Valley Main Canal, which carries water for the irrigation of 16,260 acres in the Rincon Valley, is 28.1 miles long, and has an initial capacity of 350 cubic feet per second. The canal crosses over the Rio Grande in the Garfield Flume and under the river in the Hatch and Rincon Siphons. Percha Arroyo Diversion Dam (http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/dams/nm82927.htm) provides protection of the Rincon Valley Canal by diverting arroyo flows into Caballo Reservoir. Leasburg Diversion Dam, on the Rio Grande 62 miles north of El Paso at the head of Mesilla Valley, is a concrete ogee weir with embankment wings. This structure diverts water into the Leasburg Canal for the upper 31,600 acres of the Mesilla Valley irrigation system. Leasburg Canal, which conveys irrigation water to Mesilla Valley, is 13.7 miles long and has an initial capacity of 625 cubic feet per second. Picacho North (http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/dams/picacho_north.htm) and Picacho South (http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/dams/picacho_south.htm) Dams provide flood protection to part of the Leasburg Canal system by blocking two arroyos northwest of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Mesilla Diversion Dam, on the Rio Grande 40 miles north of El Paso, is a low concrete weir, radial gate structure, 22 feet high, flanked by levees. This structure diverts water into the East Side and West Side Canals for the lower 53,650 acres of the Mesilla Valley irrigation system. The East Side Canal is 13.5 miles long and has an initial capacity of 300 cubic feet per second. The West Side Canal is 23.5 miles long and has an initial capacity of 650 cubic feet per second. Near its terminus, the West Side Canal system crosses under the Rio Grande in the Montoya Siphon. American Diversion Dam, on the Rio Grande 2 miles northwest of El Paso and immediately above the point where the river becomes the international boundary line, diverts irrigation water to El Paso Valley. The 18-foot high dam is a radial-gate structure between earthfill dikes. It is operated by the American Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission to regulate delivery of water to Mexico in accordance with treaty provisions. American Canal, also constructed and operated by the American Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission in connection with the American Diversion Dam, carries water 2.1 miles from the dam to the head of Franklin Canal. The canal capacity is 1,200 cubic feet per second. Franklin Canal, which conveys water to El Paso Valley, is 28.4 miles long, has an initial capacity of 325 cubic feet per second, and serves 17,000 acres in the upper portion of the valley. It was privately constructed about 1889, and was acquired by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1912 to become one of the project`s main canals. Riverside Diversion Dam, the southernmost project diversion point, is on the Rio Grande 15 miles southeast of El Paso, and diverts water into the Riverside Canal. This 17.5-foot-high, radial-gate concrete structure has a flood bypass weir and is flanked by river levees. Riverside Canal is 17.2 miles long, has an initial capacity of 900 cubic feet per second, serves 39,000 acres in the lower portion of the valley, and carries any available surplus through to the Hudspeth District. Tornillo Canal, a continuation of Riverside Canal, is 12 miles long and has an initial capacity of 325 cubic feet per second. Operation and maintenance in the New Mexico portion of the project area is directed by the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. The Bureau`s Rio Grande Project Office directs operation and maintenance of Elephant Butte Dam and Powerplant, Caballo Dam, Percha Arroyo Dike, Picacho North and South Dams, and reserved works consisting of Percha, Leasburg, Mesilla, and Riverside Diversion Dams. El Paso County Water Improvement District No. I operates and maintains the Texas portion of the project area.

Contact

Title: Area Office Manager
Organization: Albuquerque Area Office
Address: 555 Broadway NE, Suite 100
City: Albuquerque, NM 87102-2352
Phone: 505-462-3542

Owner

Title: Public Affairs Officer
Organization: Upper Colorado Regional Office
Address: 125 South State Street, Rm 7102
City: Salt Lake City, UT 84138-1102
Fax: 801-524-5499
Phone: 801-524-3774

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Rio Grande Project

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