Flooding raises questions about El Paso’s storm drainage

EL PASO, Texas -- Multiple areas of El Paso have experienced flash floods in recent days, which is something many El Pasoans say they thought wouldn’t happen since they’re paying El Paso Water fees each month to build storm water infrastructure. 

Martin Noriega, the chief operations officer of El Paso Water, told ABC-7 that the infrastructure isn’t just working - but it’s actually thriving. 

"It prospered this week,” Noriega said. “We haven't had as many erosion kinds of issues, destruction if you want to call it, you know - the doomsdayers.”

One of the reasons Noriega says the infrastructure is working is because we didn’t see Interstate 10 flood and have to be closed down, which is something we’ve seen in previous storms. 

"As you see this year, we got quite a bit of rain in these past two days and I-10 is still flowing,” Noriega said. “It's still flowing with traffic. We haven't had to shut down, we're not even close to i,t so it is working a lot.”

After the 2006 storms, El Paso Water started charging El Pasoans a storm water fee to pay for infrastructure. The utility company told ABC-7 that each home pays on average of $4.50 a month. 

After those 2006 storms, the utility also identified the need to spend approximately $650,000,000 in capital improvement projects.

Some El Pasoans are questioning whether the money has been well spent. 

Lawrence Davenport told ABC-7 that in his opinion the money is "most definitely not being used properly." 

Davenport wasn’t the only one who thought that way. 

"Yesterday made it really clear that they need some strategies for where the water is going to go when we get this much at once,” contended Flora Newberry. 

“El Paso is not equipped for this much rain apparently because our drainage is not doing it's job,” added Rose Morales.

El Paso Water's COO acknowledged there's still room for improvement.

“You know what, we've had our issues and we've got certain things we could work on,” Noriega said.