Shubert on Stormwater Fee: ‘We’re $100 million into a billion dollar effort’

Record rainfall during Storm 2006 resulted in nearly $200 million in damage to homes and businesses in El Paso County.

“It was the most runoff and rain I’d ever seen in my life,” Charlie Wakeem, with the Stormwater Utility Board, said, “The drainage system was poorly engineered for a century and poorly maintained for a century.”

Wakeem became a member of the Stormwater Utility, created by El Paso Water in 2009.

“I think what was really illuminating was the fact that we, as a city, had not been taking care of these potential problems for many, many years, or maybe ever,” Realtor Dan Olivas said. He also served on the stormwater utility board.

“The water was rushing down and it just felt like a freight train going by here and then it washed the Blockbuster down the street away so the devastation was close and personal and it was scary,” Olivas said, recalling the powerful current of stormwater that caused the Blockbuster at Mesa and Thunderbird to collapse.

I-10 suffered massive flooding as dams and retention ponds overflowed. The Saipan neighborhood east of the Spaghetti Bowl was devastated. Years after the storm, every single home in the neighborhood was bought and torn down. The city built a park and a water retention pond at the site.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of effort done between 2006 and today,” Alan Shubert said. The former chief engineer for the City of El Paso is now the Vice President of Operations for El Paso Water.

“If you think about the buyouts of properties we did then, for the Saipan Park pond and the Mowad area, to the channels that were built after storm 2006, its been an awful lot,” Shubert said.

The stormwater system currently consists of 21 pump stations, more than 300 ponds, nearly 40 dams and basins, more than 250 miles of channels, agricultural drains and storm drain conduits and upwards of six thousand storm drain drop inlets.

“In very round numbers, we’re $100 million into what’s basically a billion dollar effort,” Shubert said.

The stormwater utility has collected $124 million since the stormwater fee was implemented. “The way the stormwater master plan was categorized, we’re trying to get the low hanging fruit first,” Shubert said, “So we’re trying to capture the largest problems the earliest in the program.”

The stormwater fee for an average home is about $3 a month, with a 30 percent hike projected over the next three years. The commercial rate can run as high as $500 a month for large businesses like car dealers.

A recently completed stormwater project is in East El Paso, the Pico Norte Pond. “In 2014, we had a big flood out there that washed cars into that pond with people in them and the fire department rescued them.”

The new Magnolia Pump Station, and its retention ponds, should now keep the freeway from flooding. “Once we feel like we got a better handle on Central, we have to head up Dyer and we’ve got to head down to Doniphan, because we have very serious flood issues there,” Shubert said.