What is that huge body of water in Northeast El Paso?

Many El Pasoans may be wondering what that huge body of water is near Fort Bliss.

The Fort Bliss Sump, as it’s called, is located in Northeast El Paso, just off Spur 601, near U.S. 54, across the freeway from Fort Bliss National Cemetery.

Many have taken to calling it Lake Fort Bliss and ABC-7 set out to find out what it is, why it’s there, how come there’s still water it and who’s in charge of maintaining it.

“It’s been there since I’ve lived here,” said Northeast El Pasoan Sean Fitzgerald. “It’s always been Lake Fort Bliss. We used to go play in it, take little boats out there, long time ago. That’s where the drainage goes from Railroad and all over that area. It dries up and then when we get the monsoon time coming then it floods it.”

The Fort Bliss Sump is one of the largest ponding areas in the city, visible from all over Northeast El Paso. It’s on federal land, it’s owned by Fort Bliss, however, El Paso Water Utilities does maintain it.

“This year, there are a lot of lakes all over El Paso,” said Alan Shubert, vice president of operations and technical services for El Paso Water Utilities. “It’s a very important drainage area, and the water that’s in it, we actually have a way where we open the gates from the Fort Bliss Sump and it actually drains to the Pershing Dam.”

Shubert said the much larger than usual amount of water currently in the Fort Bliss Sump — which is visible as far away as Alabama Street — is due to the six and a half inches of rain that fell in Northeast El Paso more than a month ago. And much of it remains there by design.

“What you’d like to do as much as possible is try to retain the water and have it percolate,” Shubert said. “That’s the best thing that we can do. It doesn’t flood the river and it helps the water table.”

Shubert said EPWU plans deepen the Fort Bliss Sump in the future as soon as the funding is available.

“One of the things we want do is we want put together about a $5 million project to deepen it and improve the conveyances going into it so the streets will flood a little less than they do today,” Shubert said.

One of the concerns with standing water is mosquitos. City officials said, since the Fort Bliss Sump is on Federal land, they don’t fog this body of water, they leave that up to Fort Bliss’ own vector control. But they do fog around the area, although they last did so one month ago today.

ABC-7 called Fort Bliss officials to find out if they’ve treated the area but ABC-7 did not hear back by deadline.