El Paso Standard

The University of Texas at El Paso has received an award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The award is in connection with UTEP's project that takes on Sustainable Water Resources for Irrigated Agriculture in the Middle Rio Grande Basin, a key issue considering future drought projections, according to a press release from the university.

Josiah Heyman, Ph.D., UTEP professor of sociology and anthropology, explained the importance of working on water issues at an internal level.

"In our corner of the world, water issues impact people who live in three states and two countries," Heyman said. "Because of the binational, multi-state nature of the problem, we knew from the moment we started conceptualizing the project that it would be imperative for us to work with partners across the state line and the international boundary if we wanted to produce information of value and applicability for the region."

In an effort to work on sustainable water resources, UTEP collaborated with numerous universities.

UTEP led the project and partnered with members from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez and Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua in Mexico, two New Mexico universities, Texas A&M AgriLife El Paso Extension and a couple of other universities in the U.S. The partners used computer modeling techniques to produce a thorough analysis of the present and projected availability of irrigation water from the main water sources in the area, which are shared by communities in Texas, New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

According to the release, the research partners discovered that surface and groundwater availability is expected to decline over the next 50 years. They estimate that in the event of a prolonged drought, the available water will be insufficient to sustain the region's current levels of agricultural production.