With storms passed, road recovery and preparation can still happen now

The remnants of Hurricane Newton may have passed through the Borderland days ago, but the damage and other issues it caused can still be found lingering around the region. So do you know what to do about things like potholes and more?

A lot of people were scrambling to deal with the wet weather when it arrived last week. But you can pick up sandbags before a storm rears it’s head.

“Within all our locations, about 15,000 sandbags were given out. And I’m happy to say that we still have many more available,” said El Paso Water Spokeswoman Christina Montoya. “The bulk of them are at the (4801 Fred Wilson Avenue) location, which is our central storm water operation center. We encourage everyone if they can to go there because we know there will always be an ample amount of sandbags. And that’s the location where we’re open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday on a regular basis.”

Montoya said that the the storm showed the millions of dollars worth of new systems the water utility has put into place to deal with flooding have started working.

“They didn’t have any major reports of flooding at all,” Montoya said. “I don’t know if it was because it was a steady rain in most parts of town, but it also can be attributed to that we have made many improvements to the storm water system, especially in the central area. I’ve noticed myself driving on I-10, you know last week when we had that rain in the morning, there wasn’t anywhere near the significant amount of water ponding on the freeway as we’ve seen in years past.”

While there were some reports of heavy rain and water getting inches deep on street, Montoya said “Many people don’t realize that our streets are designed as a conveyance. Many of them, there is no drainage pipe underneath. In other words, the streets were designed to carry the storm water into the inlet, into the pond, into the channel.”

That has left some issues on the roadways as potholes have begun to develop. Pothole repair is handled by the city of El Paso itself, and it takes people reporting them to then get them fixed. To get potholes you’ve seen fixed, you can file a report online or by calling the city at 3-1-1.