Federal Flood Assessment Conference Recommendations and Proceedings
Abstract
Beginning in late July and continuing through mid September 2006 the Paso del Norte region,
consisting of El Paso City and County, Texas, southern New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico,
experienced a number of record high precipitation events and severe localized and widespread
flooding. According to the National Weather service, the July 31 to August 4 rains alone were
more like a 100-150 year recurring event over the areas hardest hit. These floods that continued
over a period of more than a month caused extensive and costly damage to infrastructure, homes,
businesses and other property to the extent the region was declared a Federal Disaster Area. In
this bi-national, three state region many different Federal agencies and other organizations have
jurisdiction or roles in forecasting climate and river flows, monitoring hydrology, water
management operations, flood control design and construction, security, infrastructure,
communication and disaster assistance.
Congressman Silvestre Reyes convened this Federal Flood Assessment Conference to tap into
the recent experiences regarding levels of coordination between federal agencies during this
month's flood control operations in the Hatch/Las Cruces area of southern New Mexico and the
El Paso/Juarez area of West Texas. This meeting between the federal water management
agencies was foreseen as timely and important for reviewing the effects of the storm and to offer
recommendations for needed changes and improvements. Valuable information was shared at the
conference that will greatly assist in assessing the flood events, improving management and
coordination among federal agencies and mitigating future impacts. Insight gained from the
conference and the follow up summary reports contained in the proceedings will also help lay the
groundwork for future planning and coordination with state and local agencies, irrigation
districts and other organizations.
One of Congressman Reyes’ desired outcomes from the conference is a proceedings report
containing summaries of each organization’s observations, responses and recommendations
regarding the area’s flood events. This conference proceedings and recommendation report
contains a summary of priority agency and organization recommendations, conference agenda,
list of participants, individual agency follow up reports identifying the agency responsibilities,
flood event impacts from the agency perspective, agency actions, lessons learned,
communication successes, full list of agency priority recommendations, identification of planned
incident reports and agency contact information.
Infrastructure funding, improved communication, river and levee maintenance, and the need
for additional weather and gauging stations, telemetry and coordinated or centralized access
to real-time monitoring data are among the highest priority recommendations. A summary of
common priority recommendations follows this section. A more complete list of agency and
organization priority recommendations is provided following the individual agency reports. The
report also includes agency conference Power Point presentations and as additional background,
maps showing gauging station locations and monitoring organizations.
Collections
Citation
Reyes, Silvestre; Brock, Peter; Michelsen, Ari (2006). Federal Flood Assessment Conference Recommendations and Proceedings. Texas Water Resources Institute. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /6085.