EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Monsoon season continues to slam the Borderland region with heavy rainfall. The most recent flood event on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, left multiple motorists stranded in the middle of Mesa near Kern Place.
The rapid rising water can mostly be attributed to a slow moving storm, but El Paso Water says the area where the storm was also played a role in the flooding.
“We do know that 1.34 inches of rain fell there in a very short period of time which would cause this type of flooding on the street… along the mountains and the foothills. Like there in the Mission Hills and Kern area, the drainage gets more complicated because it runs off so quickly. You got the rolling hills there because, you know, before any of that development, those are arroyos that are just trying to get all the water off the mountain to the river,” said Gilbert Trejo, the vice president of operations and technical services for EP Water.
“As development comes, you know, it builds obstructions along the way. Whether it was the city or developers in that area that tried to contain the water as much as they could, it’s still very challenging because of the speed and the velocity that the water is traveling. So, yeah, what we saw there on Mesa was water accumulate and flood Mesa,” Trejo said.
Trejo said the water did not take long to drain out after the flooding event, but other agencies like the El Paso Fire Department and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) were called to help with assistance and water extraction.
KTSM reached out to TxDOT for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of this report.
EP Water says it prepares year round for flooding events by making sure pipes and drainage systems are clear of debris and up their efforts during monsoon season with crews on standby 24 hours, 7 days a week in the case of flooding.
In addition to maintenance, EP Water says several projects are underway to address flooding in areas that receive intense rainfall.
“We have projects all over the city to address their drainage issues. We’ve heard them loud and clear ever since the 2006 storm event, so we’re making our way down to this priority list to make sure that whenever an event like this does happen, there’s a system in place to be able to control it,” Trejo said.
A few of these projects are focused in West El Paso to alleviate flooding in the Mission Hills area, streets near Brentwood, up the mountain on Canterbury and building dams up on Palisades.
According to EP Water, these projects come with a timeline of around five years to complete, but many are already in the design phase, close to being scheduled for construction.
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