Potential routes for a highway in El Paso’s Mission Valley run alongside a restored wetland called Rio Bosque. Environmental advocates are urging TxDOT to scrap the idea.
Dozens of people attend TxDOT’s public meeting on possible highway expansion near the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park in El Paso on May 2, 2024. EL PASO — Dozens of people crammed into a conference room on the eastern edge of El Paso on a recent Thursday evening. Some brought signs, some wore t-shirts, others diligently wrote their feedback on notecards. But the message was resounding: Don’t build a highway near our wetland.
Transportation is the second-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Texas after industry, accounting for about a third of emissions. Carbon emissions from vehicles in Texas areBut both in Texas and nationwide, the role of highways is being re-examined. Residents have organized against highway expansions in cities like Houston and Austin, and federal transportation agencies are addressing the legacy of highways that pass through communities of color.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seasonal floods on the Rio Grande caused widespread damage in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, its Mexican sister city. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War established the river as the international border in 1848. But the river changed course with each flood season, flummoxing officials trying to map the official boundary.
“Any effort, no matter how small, to remind people what it would look like to rewild the place — to look back in time before the big engineering projects — is a good thing,” Alvarez said.While the Rio Bosque wetlands was taking shape in the late 1990s, transportation planners were also eying the area. TxDOT completed ain 1997 that laid out conceptual designs for a highway stretching 20 miles between the Zaragoza bridge — two miles north of Rio Bosque — and the border crossing at Fabens.
The elevated section of Loop 375 Border Highway between the border wall and Rio Grande near downtown El Paso. TxDOT is studying the possibility of extending the highway near the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park with alternative elevated designs proposed similar to the one shown.The valley is also El Paso’s most important agricultural area, fed by the Rio Grande. It is also home to Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, one of three federally-recognized tribes in Texas.
“Rio Bosque is a true rewilding success story,” Rezendes said, referring to the process of increasing biodiversity and restoring the natural processes of an ecosystem, including the reintroduction of native species. “For me the idea of returning the land to its natural state in any way we can is beautiful.”
Rio Bosque “is also one of the few and unique public open spaces in the Lower Valley where families can enjoy trails, go bird watching, and learn what El Paso looked like prior to modern development,” said Gilbert Trejo, the utility’s vice president of operations.
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