Rio Grande reaches highest level since late '50s

David Crowder / El Paso Times
El Paso Times

The Rio Grande stormed out of its banks Tuesday and rose as high as anyone has seen it since the late 1950s, reaching all too close to the top of the levees built to keep the river from flooding neighborhoods and farms.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Weather Service issued a warning that the river would surge to a peak level of 9.5 feet at a monitoring point near the Courchesne Bridge south of Sunland Park Drive.

At that spot on the river, the levee is 11 to 12 feet high, said Ken Rakestraw, chief of the Water Accounting Division for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which is responsible for the levees.

Carlos Marin, the commission's acting commissioner, conceded that a 9.5-foot water level on the levee would be uncomfortably close to capacity.

"People should take the precautions they see fit," Marin said when asked about the need for evacuations. "We cannot guarantee the structural stability of the levees."