Engineers are reviewing every dam the district owns and maintains to identify potential failure modes and prioritize future repairs

Damien Willis, Organ Mountain News

LAS CRUCES - Elephant Butte Irrigation District is conducting risk assessments on all 27 dams it owns and maintains, part of a broader effort to identify potential failure modes and decide which structures need attention first.

Senior Engineering Manager Alex Rubio told the EBID Board of Directors on Aug. 12 that district staff had spent two days reviewing the dams individually with engineering consultants.

“We’re having them do risk assessments on all 27 of our dams,” Rubio said. “We’re going through every dam individually and recognizing potential failure modes.”

The work is intended to produce a risk-analysis matrix that will help EBID prioritize maintenance and repairs.

Rubio said the assessments will help determine “how we’re going to have our dam crews attend to these dams, in what order.”

The district already performs annual inspections of the 27 structures, Rubio said.

During the board discussion, Treasurer-Manager Josh Smith asked whether EBID had a complete inventory of where each dam is located.

“There’s a lot of dams up and down the side of this valley and both sides,” Smith said. “Nobody even knows where the hell they’re at.”

Rubio responded that EBID does.

“We do annual inspections,” he said. “We know exactly where they’re at, how to get there and what we’ve got to do.”

Broader dam work underway

The systemwide review comes as EBID is already working on several dam rehabilitation and maintenance projects.

District officials previously identified ongoing rehabilitation work at Lucero, Hammett and Rodey dams as part of a broader public-safety and infrastructure program.

Rubio also told the board EBID had been meeting with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation over three major diversion dams. Reclamation provided the district with a list of repairs, fixes and concerns that need to be addressed.

The work comes as public attention is focused on Tortugas Site 1 Dam, a 64-year-old high-hazard structure east of New Mexico State University.

Federal planners recently selected a preferred $74 million rehabilitation for Tortugas after engineers found the dam is hydrologically undersized, badly eroded and would overtop during the project’s design storm.

The Tortugas project is separate from EBID’s systemwide risk assessment, but both efforts reflect the district’s increasing focus on aging flood-control infrastructure.

Prioritizing limited resources

The 27-dam review is not itself a construction program.

Rather, it is intended to help EBID determine which structures carry the greatest risks and where limited staff, equipment and funding should be directed first.

Rubio said the district has also conducted drone flights and survey work around emergency spillways and is coordinating with state and local agencies on infrastructure projects that intersect with EBID facilities.

EBID has increasingly relied on in-house crews for dam and drain work.

Earlier this summer, Rubio reported that work performed by district crews had an estimated outsourced value of about $9.5 million. That included removal of roughly 192,000 cubic yards of sediment from dams and rehabilitation of nearly 86,000 linear feet of drains.

The new risk assessments are intended to give those efforts a clearer order of priority.

For EBID, that means looking beyond whichever dam is generating the most immediate concern and evaluating the entire system.

Tortugas may be the most visible example at the moment.

But it is only one of 27.

Damien Willis is founder and editor of Organ Mountain News. If you have a personal story to share or a lead we should follow up on, reach out at OrganMountainNews@gmail.com or connect with him on X at @damienwillis.