AmeriCorps Ground Water Protection

1. Purpose and Objectives: This particular strategy was designed to allow local communities to take an active role in protecting their ground water by using wellhead protection techniques. The El Paso project was used for demonstration purposes and later became the model of choice at a national level. The principal goal of the Wellhead Protection Program is to describe and assess the City’s drinking water and inventory the possible pollution sources within the wellhead protection areas surrounding public water wells. The wellhead protection area inventory focus and primary objectives are the protection and the prevention of contamination of the ground water utilized by El Paso’s public water supply wells.

2. Funding: Total cost was about $260,000 for a two-year period.

3. Partners: EPA, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program Mentors, TNRCC, EPWU, EPCCHED, La Junta Municipal de Agua y Saneamiento de Juarez, Chih., MX, CERM, UTEP.

4. Description: In 1989, RSVP volunteers expressed desire to implement a WHP program in El Paso. The volunteers collaborated with the TNRCC, which in turn cooperated with the EPA Region 6, to decide on a specific site for their project. Initial results were reported in 1990, but the effort did not end there. In 1994, a new effort was launched to re-do the previous inventories, mainly because of changes in El Paso demographics that could have rendered the initial data obsolete. This time, however, the work was undertaken by the EPA AmeriCorps Program, made up of a group of UTEP students who were mentored by RSVP volunteers.

5. Background: AmeriCorps is an organization which was established by President Clinton, through statute, to resolve community problems. The AmeriCorps Members provide service within their own community to improve and restore its condition. The EPA collaborated with AmeriCorps Members and other Program Partners to achieve community environment betterment goals and to establish what has become an extremely successful EPA AmeriCorps Program at the University of Texas at El Paso in El Paso, TX.

6. Methodology: 1) UTEP students and RSVP Mentors worked together to inventory potential pollution sources in El Paso’s wellhead protection areas in order to enhance the protection of the El Paso border area communities’ drinking water supplies. 2) TNRCC, AmeriCorps, and RSVP members identified the WHP areas which previously had been delineated using the calculated fixed radius method. The wells were plotted on a sectional county map. 3) RSVP Members with AmeriCorps students begin actual field work.

7. Status: Project is complete and a final report is available.

8. U.S. Contacts: Romy Ledesma, CERM, (915) 747-5433; Fax: (915) 747-5145 Ken Williams, EPA Region 6, (214) 665-7129