Fresh Water Availability

Since the 1630’s, during Spanish settlement, the river has been used primarily for agricultural purposes. From the San Luis Valley where the rivers headwaters are located, to Southern Texas, farming continues to have a high impact on the river. In both the United States and Mexico, about eighty percent of the water is used for irrigation. Other uses in the past and present are fishing, wildlife refuge, drinking, recreation, small hydropower uses, grazing for domestic livestock and logging, flood control, pollution disposal and more recently, municipal water uses including industry and manufacturing.

Based on the snow pack in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado and the major tributaries that are streams flowing into the river supplies determines how much water will reach the gulf of Mexico. The major contributing tributaries in the United States are Pecos, Devils, Chama, and Puerco and Mexico's tributaries include Conchos, Salado, and San Juan streamflow.

There was a time when the flowing Rio Grande/Rio Bravo was extremely wild, spirited and plentiful for the settlers. However, with the three U.S. states and Mexico increasing in development and population, the river is clearly in a dilemma of sustainability.

Laws and treaties have been established to determine how much water each state and country uses downstream of the headwaters as early as 1906. Governing the river's resources is an extremely complex condition based on the different states, and international laws. Cooperation among the two countries and three U.S. States is essential to prolong dependency to the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. Allocated water is measured in an acre foot that equals to 325,851 gallons.

Presently, El Paso is the only city along the Rio Grande that treats the water for municipal use, which includes drinking. Two state of the art water treatment plants guaranteed delivering safe, quality water to the city of El Paso customers. On the average about half of El Paso's water comes from the river. As El Paso's underground water source is depleted of fresh water there may be a higher percentage treated from the river in the future. Although the river is a renewable resource of water to due annual snow fall in southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico, drought conditions play a major role in the availability of the river's allocations. Drought contingency plans have been developed to reduce water consumption during severe drought periods.