El Paso Matters – Border highway extension’s latest route shifts around Rio Bosque. Some homeowners are still pushing back

SOCORRO, Texas — It was a homecoming for Kristian and Pamela Lujan when they purchased their house off Socorro Road four years ago. 

The Lujans grew up in Socorro in El Paso’s Lower Valley before they left and rented around, raising chickens in Homestead Meadows, a semi-rural community in northeastern El Paso County. When their son Ezra was born, the couple felt like it was time to put down roots.

It’s not quite the same farmtown Socorro of their childhood. More cars speed down the two-lane road leading to Loop 375. Despite a stagnating population, developers continue to build housing subdivisions that lure El Paso residents to the eastward sprawl.

Recently, the Lujans stood frowning in front of a panel board in the Clint High School cafeteria. More than 240 people showed up to the Aug. 4 community meeting in Clint organized by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The agency unveiled the preferred alignment, or selected route, for the potential 20-mile extension of the border highway that makes two significant changes from the proposals TxDOT showed in 2024. The new proposal shifts the elevated highway outside the boundaries of Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, though still close to the wetlands. It also elevates portions of the highway at the start of the extension that will eventually run through Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Socorro, San Elizario, Clint, Fabens and Tornillo. 

The previous alignments drew the ire of environmentalists because of the highway’s intrusion on Rio Bosque, a critical wildlife habitat and one of the few native wetlands restored in El Paso.

The state’s efforts are part of the Border Highway East Corridor Study, the latest in a string of studies dating back to the 1990s to address traffic demands in this area. The transportation agency projects the area’s population to grow 18% between 2022 and 2030.

Kristian tapped the rendering on the panel board.

“That’s where we live,” he said.

He slid his index finger down slightly.

“And that looks like the entrance to the highway,” he said.

Pamela said she’s worried the highway extension will bring more traffic accidents to an area where children are boarding the school bus.

“I would rather see a trail of pretty trees and being able to actually walk,” Pamela said. “Socorro Road is not that accessible. We need sidewalks, we need more walking paths we can actually cross, we need better drainage.”

“Every week we see crashes right in front of our home on Socorro where it’s 35 miles per hour,” Kristian said. “So, in my mind, I’m picturing a highway, it’s just going to be 10 times worse with people going 65, 70, 80.”

TxDOT and the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization project traffic on Socorro Road would drop 60% and traffic on Alameda Avenue east of Loop 375 would drop  30% after the highway extension is built, according to a presentation at the community meeting.

Spokespeople for TxDOT stressed, however, the highway extension is still in the early planning phase, with no greenlight or funding to initiate the project.

The final comment period for the study ends Aug. 18.

READ MORE: El Paso has a celebrity beaver and it lives at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park

If the state moves forward with the project, the highway would be constructed in segments. The transportation agency estimates the entire corridor would take 40 to 50 years to complete.

People who attended the community meeting acknowledged they might not be alive to see the dust settle on the finished project.

“That’s the way sometimes studies are,” said TxDOT spokesperson Lauren Macias-Cervantes. “It just takes a really long time to get to this point. I mean, it is a long corridor and sometimes there’s just not the momentum. Sometimes there isn’t the funding. Sometimes it’s just the needs change.”

‘The border highway by itself doesn’t work’

The Lujans moved back to Socorro because they wanted that West Texas sunset dipping in their hometown skies. They wanted land for chickens and a pomegranate tree and garden beds of jalapeños, strawberries and watermelon. 

And living across the road from restored wetlands with trails to walk their hound dogs, Cash and Sangria – that was an opportunity to which they couldn’t say no.

The couple wants to pass their house down to their son Ezra, but said they would likely sell it and move further east if the state proceeds with the highway concept presented at the August meeting.

Eduardo Calvo, executive director of the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization, said congestion is the obvious problem when land use transforms from agricultural to commercial and residential. People have valid concerns about displacement and the highway’s impact on the environment, but residents also don’t want to be stuck in traffic, he said.

Moving forward after the study’s conclusion, government agencies need to come together to build a grid rather than treat the Border Highway East corridor as a standalone highway, Calvo said. That grid includes arterial streets, perpendicular highways and the Nuevo Hueco Tanks Road extension in Socorro. TxDOT may say it doesn’t own those roads and has no control over them, Calvo said.

“But again, my position is, the border highway by itself doesn’t work,” Calvo said.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization is a regional agency created by federal law to direct funding and provide input on long-term mobility plans. While the organization works with local, state and federal governments on transportation infrastructure, it does not build roads or control land-use decisions.

“Big developers building thousands of new homes don’t really consider what is the current or immediate future connectivity there,” he said. “They just want to sell houses and the houses get bought by people and then all of the sudden, boom, you have what we have at the Eastlake interchange and far eastern county.”

Transportation projects are complicated because they affect many people with different priorities, and people who oppose projects are more likely than supporters to show up to community meetings, Calvo said.

In 2020, Socorro residents who lived on Bauman Road protested the city’s plan to build an arterial road through their neighborhood. Five years later, Socorro city government identified a new route to connect drivers to Interstate 10.

Calvo cautioned that the longer governments wait to find a solution, the more challenging it will become to alleviate congestion as development is happening at a faster pace than infrastructure. El Paso can’t afford to let the connectivity problem languish, or to abandon the border highway project for another decade, he said.

‘You can’t put a price on certain things like this’

At the August meeting, residents hovered over the long roll plots spread over the cafeteria tables, looking for their homes on the maps.

Socorro Mayor Rudy Cruz Jr. thinks the highway extension could help improve 911 response times because it’s difficult to move traffic aside on a two-lane road for ambulances or fire trucks. He said many of his constituents support an easier way to connect to Loop 375 or Interstate 10.

But he questions why the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo would have to give up tribal land for it, based on the concept presented at the meeting.

State and local governments do not have the power to use eminent domain to seize land from a federally-recognized reservation.

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens,” Cruz said.

Most of his family members live in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, a sovereign nation within El Paso, he said. They have expressed apprehension over a potential highway invading their ceremonial grounds. The preferred alignment shows the highway cutting across farmland where Tiguas grow alfalfa and medicinal plants.

“Just picture this property being your backyard,” Cruz said, tapping where the tribal farms are located. “And even though they were gonna give you money for your land, is it something you’re willing to do? Is it something you’re willing to negotiate? You can’t put a price on certain things like this.”

The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo did not respond to requests for comment.

Shirley Vernium, a teacher, found her family’s farmland on the map. She resides just south of the Riverside Canal, an irrigation channel that flows parallel to the Rio Grande. Her family has lived in this area for generations. They grow cotton and pecan trees, and for people such as her cousin, farming is their livelihood. She pointed to a potential bridge that seemed to point right at her cousin’s house.

Her partner, Gilbert Lujan, owns a trucking company in Socorro and lives next door to Kristian and Pamela. They’re thinking about their retirement plans and feel a sense of inevitability about the distant future – not just of the highway, but of relics from their family history that will be sold and lost.

“It’s exhausting trying to protect what you paid for and what you own,” Vernium said.

“I’ll be dead anyway,” Gilbert said.

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