CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CNN) -- After inspecting another well that's gone bad, Umberto Uranga shrugs and moves on. "Many of the water wells in this part of town are the same way," he says. "They're all brackish. The fresh water is gone. We're opening new ones to the south, and we'll still have 150 wells, pumping three times as much water as we used to take 30 years ago."

As the public relations man for the Juarez water agency, Uranga puts a positive spin on the situation. But the demand for water continues to grow.

More than 50,000 new residents arrive in this booming border city every year, attracted by job opportunities in mushrooming labor-intensive factories. Thousands of workers have no choice but to live in outlying shantytowns without freshwater supplies. The city deploys a fleet of tanker trucks to these areas, hosing water into empty drums in front yards -- just one of its desperate measures to keep pace with explosive growth.

But Uranga is worried about more than building pumps and pipes to deliver water. He knows that his city draws its drinking water from an underground aquifer, a single source of supply that some experts say could be exhausted within five to 10 years.

Across the border from Juarez, in El Paso, Texas, Ed Archuleta also faces a serious water problem. He's the general manager at El Paso Water Utilities, and he knows that the water shortage in Juarez can no longer be ignored in his city. "We're concerned that they'll have more public health problems," he says. "And they could impact the whole economy of this area by not having sufficient water."

That's why Archuleta is working with his counterparts in Juarez to help them solve their water problem. El Paso shares the same underground water source, but its portion is expected to dry up in 25 to 30 years. The city also relies on the Rio Grande to supply about half of the water it needs. It enforces strict measures to conserve water and is building new water treatment plants and planning future projects to desalinate water and tap new water sources more than 100 miles away.

The partnership between El Paso and Juarez could be a model for tackling water issues in the arid deserts along the U.S.-Mexican border, where economic growth driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is causing runaway demand for scarce water supplies.

Watch Gary Strieker's complete video report Wednesday, June 6 on CNN.