For workers on the Rio Grande, caution follows close calls

While Mexico’s lawless northern border often looms large across the Rio Grande, local water managers report few problems at their isolated pump stations along the river.

In interviews, government officials who oversee those pumps, which supply water to Valley farmers and public utilities, recalled just four major incidents in recent years, but expressed an abundance of caution.

Typically, men will cross the river and tell irrigation district workers to leave or stop clearing brush that provides cover for drug smuggling and illegal immigration. They occasionally steal equipment and threaten employees.

Managers tell workers to simply walk away if threatened. It’s the safest course of action, but one that potentially exposes critical infrastructure to cartel operatives.

Perhaps the most serious incident happened three weeks ago, when workers repairing a water pump near Hidalgo reported that someone shot at them from Mexico. Luckily, the men escaped unharmed.

The shooting took place about 3:30 p.m. July 7, just west of International Boulevard. A Border Patrol tower often sits nearby and agents routinely pass through the area in their white-and-green SUVs.

“We might be right next to the city, but once you cross that wall you’re in the middle of nowhere,” said Othal E. Brand Jr., president and general manager of Hidalgo County Water Improvement District 3.

In response, Brand said District 3 will pay for field employees to take concealed handgun license classes and carry firearms on the job.

Both Brand and a District 3 foreman said the shooting was reported to Border Patrol, but a spokesman said there’s no record of the incident. Hidalgo police sent an officer to the pump a week later, but couldn’t find any evidence of the reported shooting, either.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, a longtime critic of the federal government’s border security efforts, questioned Border Patrol’s response in an interview with The Monitor.

“What should be alarming to every American is that the data the (Obama) administration is relying upon is clearly faulty if the attack on the Hidalgo Water Improvement District employees is not included in (Department of Homeland Security) statistics,” Staples said.

“Our South Texas ranchers and farmers are under attack today from violent drug cartel members who are becoming more emboldened and increasingly dangerous in their activities,” said Staples, who’s running for lieutenant governor.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Little known outside government and farming circles, the Valley’s water and irrigation districts are perhaps the most important part of the region’s water infrastructure. Nearly every city in Hidalgo and Cameron counties relies on at least one district for water.

In all, the Valley’s 27 water districts operate 103 pumps along the river, said Rio Grande Watermaster Erasmo Yarrito Jr., who oversees the river for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Like cities, water and irrigation districts are overseen by elected boards with the power to tax and borrow money.

Many districts, created to supply farmers with water, pre-date the Valley’s cities, which have become major customers. The districts themselves remain small, usually with fewer than 40 employees and lean budgets.

With the Zetas and Gulf Cartel battling for control of riverfront property directly across from their pump stations, the districts rely on Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies to protect their most valuable assets.

“I know they’re spread thin and it’s hard to keep a warm body down there 24/7, but I wish they would,” said Jo Jo White, general manager of Hidalgo and Cameron Counties Irrigation District 9. One of the Valley’s largest, District 9 operates 10 pumps from a cinderblock building south of Mercedes.

An occasional body gets caught on the pump station’s river grate, which screens water entering the system, but otherwise District 9 hasn’t had any problems, said White, who’s been the general manager for nearly 20 years.

A few minutes east, Delta Lake Irrigation District’s pump sits near a concrete weir designed to raise the river level and make pumping easier. When the Rio Grande runs low, though, the weir becomes a concrete path across the river, White said, and brazen thieves have stolen tractors and driven right across the weir into Mexico.

Not far west, Donna Irrigation District’s pump sits near the city’s international bridge.

On Nov. 12, 2009, men crossed the river there and assaulted a district employee, damaging his vehicle and chasing him from the pump station. They stole equipment before returning to Mexico.

The employee quit soon afterward, said Nora R. Zapata, Donna Irrigation District’s general manager.

Unidentified men have also crossed the river and threatened employees at Delta Lake and United Irrigation District, telling them to leave their pump stations. In both instances, workers left unharmed.

ALL QUIET

Down South 15th Street, past the border wall, sits a major pumping station operated by Hidalgo County Irrigation District 2. With 10 pumps, District 2 supplies water to McAllen and throughout the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo area.

Large wooden barriers, backed with corrugated metal, were apparently installed years ago to shield electrical equipment from gunfire. But Water Superintendent Bert Wessling, who’s spent nearly 34 years with District 2, said he couldn’t recall any violence near the pump station.

“I don’t want to minimize the severity of it,” but there have been very few problems, said Sonia Lambert, general manager of Cameron County Irrigation District 2 and vice chairwoman of the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority, which includes utilities, cities and irrigation districts across a six-county area.

Troy Allen, general manager of Delta Lake Irrigation District and president of the Lower Rio Grande Valley Water District Managers’ Association, took a similar view: While the incidents that have been reported are serious, they’re few and far between.

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Dave Hendricks covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4452.