The Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority currently consists of twelve water systems in five separate areas providing service to sixteen communities (15 Colonias) in the area south of Las Cruces from Brazito to north end of Anthony, Butterfield Park, Organ & Mountainview on the East Mesa, and Valle Del Rio, High Valley and Rincon. The LRGPWWA’s five service areas total about 266 square miles, and we provide water service to just over 5,300 connections.
The Lower Rio Grande PWWA also provides wastewater service in the Mesquite community in the South Valley and in the Organ community in the East Mesa Service Area. The Mesquite wastewater collection system was upgraded from a small diameter pressurized system with a wetlands treatment facility to a gravity system discharging into the Doña Ana County South Central Wastewater Treatment Facility with an $8.9 million project funded by USDA Rural Development and the NM Colonias Infrastructure Trust Fund completed in 2015. A project to extend that collection system into unserved areas of Mesquite and to the community of Brazito is nearing the construction phase with $8.8 million in funding from USDA- RD and NM-CITF, and a second project in the design phase has been awarded $14.3 million in USDA-RD funding and $5.751 million in NM Colonias funds.
The Organ community is served by a gravity collection system discharging into a treatment lagoon which received some improvements during a $3 million USDA-RD funded Water & Wastewater System Improvements Project in 2014.
Watch a 7-minute documentary filmed by Rural Community Assistance Corporation about the creation of the Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority
Click Here to read an EPA Case Study about Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority.
Watch a 15 minute long video of Rural Community Assistance Partnership’s 50th Anniversary Interview with Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority Projects Manager, Karen Nichols in 2023. The interviewer’s questions were omitted.
Meet Our Staff
When the MDWAs – Mesquite, Vado, La Mesa, Berino, Desert Sands and now Brazito, Organ and Butterfield Park – decided to merge their employees were retained by Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority, and there have been several new additions as well.
In our Mesquite office, above, L to R: Christina Gallegos, Connie Garcilazo, Delmy Garcia, Benita Evaro and Terry Valois. In our East Mesa office: Mary Berry.
Here is a YouTube video from the PBS affiliate KNME program “Colores” titled “Blackdom. “Blackdom is the virtually untold story of Black pioneers Frank and Ella Boyer dream to create a “colony” for Black people in the prairie of Southeastern New Mexico. It was a community of 300 people, “The Only Exclusive Negro Settlement in New Mexico” as the official township letterhead stated. Blackdom existed in New Mexico from 1908 to the mid-1920.”
Frank & Ella Boyer moved to Vado in 1921, and their grandson, Roosevelt “Roosie” Boyer was the president of Vado Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association for many years. Roosie was one of the incorporators of the Lower Rio Grande Mutual Domestic Water Association (an umbrella entity formed by the founding entities of the LRGPWWA prior to our merger) and one of the founders of the Lower Rio Grande Public Water Works Authority. You will see Roosie in the video and in some of our photos on this site. We miss him.
