Rio Grande Project
Map of the Rio Grande drainage basin
|
|
| General statistics | |
|---|---|
| Begun | 1905 |
| Completed | 1952 |
| Dams and reservoirs |
Elephant Butte Caballo Percha (diversion) Leasburg (diversion) Mesilla (diversion) American (diversion) Riverside (diversion) Picacho North (flood control) Picacho South (flood control) |
| Power plants | Elephant Butte (27.95 MW) |
| Operations | |
| Storage capacity | 2,453,413 acre·ft (3.026240 km3) |
| Land irrigated | 193,000 acres (78,000 ha) |
| Power plant capacity | 27.95 MW |
The Rio Grande Project is a United States Bureau of Reclamation irrigation, hydroelectricity, flood control, and interbasin water transfer project serving the upper Rio Grande basin in the southwestern United States. The project irrigates 193,000 acres (780 km2) along the river in the states of New Mexico and Texas. Approximately 60 percent of this land is in New Mexico. Some water is also allotted to Mexico to irrigate some 25,000 acres (100 km2) on the south side of the river. The project was authorized in 1905, but its final features were not implemented until the early 1950s.
The project consists of two large storage dams, 6 small diversion dams, two flood-control dams, 596 miles (959 km) of canals and their branches and 465 miles (748 km) of drainage channels and pipes. A small hydroelectric plant at one of the project's dams also supplies electricity to the region.
The first people to use the waters of the Rio Grande were the Pueblo Indians, who used simple irrigation systems that were noted by the Spanish in the 16th century while conducting expeditions from Mexico to North America. In the mid-19th century, American settlers began intensive irrigation development of the Rio Grande watershed. Small dikes, dams, canals, and other irrigation works were constructed along the Rio Grande and its tributaries. The river would take out some of these primitive structures in its annual floods, and a large, coordinated project would be needed to construct permanent replacements. However, investigations to begin this project did not begin until the early twentieth century.
Like many rivers of the American Southwest, runoff in the Rio Grande basin is limited and varies widely from year to year. By the 1890s, water use in the upper basin was so great that the river's flow near El Paso, Texas, was reduced to a trickle in dry summers. To resolve these problems, plans were drafted up for a large storage dam at Elephant Butte, about 120 miles (190 km) downstream of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Newlands Reclamation Act was passed in 1902, authorizing the Rio Grande Project as a Bureau of Reclamation undertaking. For the next two years, surveyors and engineers undertook a comprehensive feasibility study for the project's dams and reservoirs.
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