Hydrochemical evaluation of Rio Grande water transport options from Elephant Butte, New Mexico to El Paso, Texas, US–Mexico border

Abstract

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. The quantity of water from the Rio Grande is important to the socio-economic sectors and development of the United States of America and Mexico border. Degrading the quality and quantity of the main groundwater aquifers in the study area raised the need for alternative water sources like the Rio Grande. This study evaluated the hydrochemistry and management options to convey water from the main dam on the Rio Grande, Elephant Butte Dam, to El Paso del Norte Region. The study used hydrogeochemical approach to: (1) describe the behavior of ions concentrations and flux in the Rio Grande, and (2) assess the quality of water conveyed by three proposed water-conveying scenarios. EXTEND visualization environment and JMP-SAS software packages were the main tools of this study. The reported results indicate that the measured value of the majority of the studied ions increase from the upper to the lower reaches. The study also found that delivering water from the Elephant Butte Dam through the river canal itself and narrows engineering conveyance are amomg the proper methods. The study demonstrated that the presented simple method is useful for scoping the conveying and routing options for water along the Rio Grande