Water Irrigation
EBID is a quasi municipal entity of the state of New Mexico. The district operates under New Mexico statutes §73-10-1 through §73-10-47 Irrigation District Cooperating with United States under Reclamation Laws; Formation and Management, and §73-11-1 through §73-11-55 Irrigation Districts Cooperating with United States under Reclamation Laws; Fiscal Affairs; Local Improvements and Special Powers.

A nine-member board of directors manages EBID. Each member is elected for a two year term and represents one of Dona Ana County's nine city polling precincts. The board hires a treasure/manager, to oversee EBID's daily operations and carry out the board's directives. Gary Esslinger has served as the treasurer-manager for the past 15 years.

EBID operations are broken down into five major departments: operations, maintenance, general/administration, hydrology, and engineering. The operations department is in charge of ordering and scheduling water. Maintenance maintains the canals, laterals, and ditches owned and used by EBID to deliver water. Administration follows the board's directives and controls the accounting, and billing. Hydrology communicates with the Bureau of Reclamation and EBID's water master for diversions of water. Hydrology's main operation is to measure and control the flow of water along the canal system. Engineering is responsible for any issues dealing with water-righted lands. This department works closely with the State Engineers office to help water-righted owners with any water rights under adjudication in the Lower Rio Grande Stream Adjudication.

  • As defined by New Mexico statutes, irrigation districts cooperate with the federal government on Bureau of Reclamation projects. These statutes generally state that irrigation districts are to:
    Serve as a contracting agency for water users to arrange to repay construction obligations to the government and furnish funds for operation and maintenance; and in connection with other matters that must be agreed to, in contract form, between the government and water users. (§73-10-1 paraphrase)
  • Serve as an agency for the assessment and collection of operation maintenance and construction charges and the payment of same, to the government in accordance with contractual arrangements. (§73-11-28 paraphrase)
  • Provide a water users' organization that might later be expanded for the purpose of assuming control of operation and maintenance upon transfer by the Bureau of Reclamation. (§73-10-45 paraphrase)
There are 90,640 acres of land within the EBID boundaries that have authorized water rights, with an estimated 7,900 water users. The Rio Grande Project covers 130 miles of land located in the Lower Rio Grande Basin from Caballo Dam to El Paso, Texas. Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs are operated and maintained by the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation. Snowmelt runoff from the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado provides the bulk of the water that reaches the Rio Grande. Water delivery into the Elephant Butte and Caballo Reservoirs is guaranteed by the terms of the 1939 Rio Grande Compact, which states that Colorado and New Mexico must deliver a specified amount of water to Elephant Butte Reservoir for use in southern New Mexico and West Texas. The irrigation season for the Rio Grande Project typically runs from mid-March to mid-October
The average annual Rio Grande flow to Elephant Butte Reservoir is 937,570 acre- feet of water, but this flow can be erratic ranging from 114,100 to 2,831,000 acre- feet per year. Water available to Elephant Butte Irrigation District is stored in the Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs until it is ordered for release by the irrigation district .

Water delivery in the EBID system was engineered as a gravity flow process (Figure 2). At no point along the Rio Grande Project is surface water irrigation pumped. The gravity flow process builds water up at different points throughout the canal system. When this water is released, the necessary surge allows water to continue flowing down the canal system instead of remaining at a laminar flow (sluggish). For example, if the average daily water use is 600 acre-feet and 1 acre-foot of water weighs 2,867,295 pounds, a significant amount of surface water force and velocity is needed to allow water to continue traveling along many miles of canals and laterals.

https://www.ebid-nm.org/AboutEBID/NMSU/03-EBIDWater.htm