Rio Hondo mayor questions irrigation district water releases

RIO HONDO — An official on Thursday dismissed Mayor Alonzo Garza’s charges that the San Benito irrigation district was wasting water during a drought that has parching farmland in the region.

Garza charged that at least three pipes along FM 2529 were gushing water into ditches that flow into the nearby Arroyo Colorado.

But Sonia Lambert, general manager of Cameron County Irrigation District No. 2, said the pipes were draining run-off water that farmers release from their fields.

“If it was your house and you have water rushing you’d do something about it,” Garza said. “With the drought we’re going through, pretty soon we’re going to be regulating water in cities and I think the irrigation district should do their part.”

The drainage pipes near San Fernando East Road were spewing water into ditches that surrounded soggy fields of sugarcane, Garza said.

Garza said he’s seen irrigation pipes churning out water since he was a boy on his ranch off FM 2529.

“I’ve seen it here and elsewhere but then I wasn’t a politician,” said Garza, who won office two years ago. “Now I feel not only that Rio Hondo but the whole county has a responsibility (to conserve water).”

Lambert called the pipes’ water discharge “isolated incidents.”

“This type of thing does happen. I’m not denying that there are spills,” she said.

The large number of farmers who are irrigating their land releases “tail water” after their fields are irrigated, she said. Then it is discharged through a system of drainage pipes and ditches that are designed to carry the water into the arroyo.

“It’s a concentration of water from miles of fields,” she said of the 64,000-acre irrigation district that includes 226 miles of canals and 14 resacas. “That’s what it’s designed to do.”

Garza said the irrigation district could regulate the amount of water that the pipes release.

But Lambert said farmers discharge the water from their fields.

Drainage pipes discharge water only after farmers release it, she said.

“He obviously has no concept of how the irrigation district works,” she said.

Lambert said Garza made the accusations because he was fired about two years ago from Cameron County Drainage District No. 3, where he worked as a machine operator.

“In my opinion he is a disgruntled former employee that was fired and is retaliating,” said Lambert, who also manages the drainage district. “He’s not concerned about water conservation. If he was, he would have called (the irrigation district). Instead, he chose to call the news media.”

Garza denied the charge, and said he wants to find ways to conserve water during the drought.

“If I wanted to retaliate, I would have done it the next day,” he said, referring to filing a lawsuit after he was fired.

Lambert called it “unfeasible” to capture the run-off water for reuse.

“We’re dealing with an irrigation district, as most others are, that’s 100 years old,” she said.

In 2004, the district launched a $15 million project that replaced its 100-year-old pump near the Rio Grande, she said. The district continues a program to replace earthen canals with pipelines and concrete-lined channels to reduce water lost to seepage.

“We’ve piped several miles of canals and lined several miles of canals with concrete to prevent seepage. It’s an ongoing process,” she said. “We’ve done tremendous amounts of rehabilitation but we haven’t scratched the surface. It will not come in my lifetime or probably in the lifetime of the next manager.”