Fresh water availability is a challenge facing the borderland and other counties, and engineers from overseas visited El Paso to learn about water conservation.

El Paso has led the way with the world's largest inland desalination plant, and some Egyptian engineers have taken notice and made their way here to the borderland.

"The plant here is very important for us in Egypt because we are facing challenge for water shortage, which means we are suffering a lot from water shortage and we should go to desalination sooner or later," said Dr. Khaled M Wassif. "So it's a new technology and we hope we can learn from it."

Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation took a tour of El Paso's water utilities. The plant produces 27.5 million gallons of fresh water each day. That water plant not only serves the city and Fort Bliss, but it also shows options for other cities running out of fresh water.

"We have a very small plant only for touristic uses on the sea. But for general use, not because of the high cost, so we hope we can apply this technology with lower costs that can go with our conditions in Egypt," Wassif said.

Throughout the year, El Paso Water Utilities draws fresh water from underground bolson aquifers, which has them rely less on river waters. However, that is an option Egypt doesn't have.

"Desalination for agriculture is not feasible for Egypt; it's too expensive," Wassif said. "In Egypt, we have a sub-sized system, which subsidizes water for farmers; for farmers water is free."

Besides learning the complexity of El Paso's desalination plant, they also came here to a desert land to see how EPWU manages its water despite the droughts and no ocean in sight.

In the summer months when water demand is high, EPWU relies on the water released from Elephant Butte lake in the Rio Grande to supplement its water sources.