{"id":268359,"date":"2026-04-27T16:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T16:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/268359\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T16:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T16:18:13","slug":"el-paso-water-didnt-assess-dam-before-acquiring-cement-lake-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/268359\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso Water didn\u2019t assess dam before acquiring Cement Lake property"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cement<\/p>\n

Cement Lake, also known as Portland Reservoir, is seen looking south as the El Paso Police Department closed multiple West El Paso thoroughfares Thursday amid concerns about a potential breach near Doniphan Drive. Closures include Loop 375 at Race Track Drive and Paisano Drive, Doniphan Drive between Race Track and Paisano drives, Sunland Park Drive at Crockett Street, and McNutt Road at River Levee Road while El Paso Water assesses risks and reduces water pressure at the lake.<\/p>\n

El Paso Water purchased a 300-acre Upper Valley site last month to preserve open space, but didn\u2019t inspect a 117-year-old dam on the property that is now in danger of breaching and flooding nearby areas, utility officials said Friday in response to questions from El Paso Matters.<\/p>\n

\u201cStructural assessments of the dam were not conducted as part of the acquisition process,\u201d El Paso Water spokesperson Denise Parra said. \u201cAfter taking ownership, the EPWater Stormwater team identified the hazardous condition of the dam and immediately began to address structural issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dam is in an area known as Cement Lake or Portland Cement Reservoir, between Interstate 10 and Paisano Drive. The site was previously used by companies that made cement.<\/p>\n

El Paso Water has been working to drain the water from the reservoir to prevent a dam collapse. Some businesses near the dam, including Rosa\u2019s Cantina, have been closed as a precaution. The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for sections of Paisano Drive and Loop 375 near the dam.<\/p>\n

El Paso County records show that the Public Service Board, which oversees El Paso Water, bought the property as of March from the Texas Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n

El Paso Water paid TxDOT $4 million in cash and exchanged other property it owned, which isn\u2019t identified in deed records, which was valued at $7.5 million.<\/p>\n

More: El Paso Water warns of increased breach risk at Cement Lake<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0National Dam Inventory<\/a>, maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, shows the earthen dam was built in 1909, and was last inspected in 1996. The dam is identified as Portland Cement Reservoir Dam in the database.<\/p>\n

The dam is 40 feet tall and 450 feet long, and has a storage capacity of 192 acre-feet of water. That\u2019s enough to supply 400-600 homes with water for a year.<\/p>\n

It is categorized as low-hazard dam, meaning that failure isn\u2019t expected to cause loss of life and would likely cause minor property damage.<\/p>\n

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is the state agency in charge of dam safety. But because it\u2019s considered low-hazard, no state inspections were required, TCEQ spokesperson Richard Richter said.<\/p>\n

A Texas Department of Transportation spokesperson said the agency couldn\u2019t provide a comment on the situation until next week.<\/p>\n

El Paso Water purchased the 300-acre site for preservation as open space by the agency\u2019s stormwater utility, Parra said. She said 10% of the stormwater utility\u2019s revenues are reserved for open space purchases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City\u2019s Open Space Advisory Board identified this land and placed it on a list for desired preservation a number of years ago,\u201d Parra said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdditionally, EPWater more recently needed an easement on the property for critical wastewater infrastructure, and through discussions with TxDOT, the agency required that the full 300 acres be acquired,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Before the purchase, El Paso Water\u2019s chief concern was possible contamination from the area\u2019s prior industrial use, so it conducted an environmental assessment, Parra said.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso Water didn\u2019t assess dam before acquiring Cement Lake property<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cement Lake, also known as Portland Reservoir, is seen looking south as the El Paso Police Department closed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[99570,99981,99943,99945,138,140,139,5768,1971,99942,8851,9237,81218],"class_list":{"0":"post-268359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-cement-lake","9":"tag-dam-collapse","10":"tag-denise-parra","11":"tag-earthen-dam","12":"tag-el-paso","13":"tag-el-paso-headlines","14":"tag-el-paso-news","15":"tag-el-paso-water","16":"tag-national-weather-service","17":"tag-portland-cement","18":"tag-property-damage","19":"tag-texas-department-of-transportation","20":"tag-utility-officials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}