Rio Grande Environmental Management Program

AUTHORIZATION:  Section 5056, WRDA 2007 (PL 110-114).

TYPE OF PROJECT:  Ecosystem Restoration

PROJECT PHASE:   Construction

NON-FEDERAL SPONSOR:  Multiple interested potential sponsors, including states of Colorado, New Mexico and Texas

BACKGROUND:   The program authority includes the entire Rio Grande Basin and tributaries and their headwaters from the Rio Grande Reservoir, near Creede, Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico.  Program features include: interagency collaboration, planning, design, construction, and evaluation of measures for fish and wildlife habitat rehabilitation and enhancement.  The program also includes provisions for computerized data inventory and analysis, applied long term resource monitoring and adaptive management to provide resource managers with information necessary to maintain a healthy watershed system in New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas.   

The Rio Grande watershed is the fifth largest in North America.  The river and its floodplain provide riparian ecosystem unique to the arid southwest as well as habitat for eight endangered and two threatened species. Water resource management activities (diversion, dams, levees, drains channelization, jetty jacks) by Federal and other entities have altered the hydrologic regime and ecological processed within the watershed.  Together with urban development, these changes have resulted in significant degradation of the Rio Grande ecosystem.

The program will develop a basin-wide data base for use by all stakeholders that will catalog all pertinent information and on-going activities across Federal, State, tribal, local and international entities within the Rio Grande basin in order to more efficiently coordinate activities and minimize duplication of effort.  The authorization also requires a Report to Congress every six years to evaluate the needs within the basin, changes needed to the program authorization and development of a habitat needs research assessment.

To address these concerns, Rio Grande Environmental Management Program (RGEMP) provides a collaborative mechanism for working together with other Federal, state, local, international, Tribal and non-governmental stakeholder interests.. The RGEMP is a program for planning, construction and evaluation of measures for fish and wildlife habitat rehabilitation and enhancement.