By Juan Montoya
This past weekend I visited a friend who lives off Eastern Street on Scott.
It had rained steadily all night and I had to leave my car at the Wal-Mart parking lot because it could not possibly traverse the flood waters that had overflowed the banks of the main drain ditch next to Perez elementary.
In fact, a whole 10-block section of the are was under water.
When I waded to his home, I found him sitting on a bed with the water rising about a foot high inside his house.
We walked outside behind the Seventh Day Adventist Church property and surveyed the flood.
"We're sinking millions into a Sports park, another million into something called Imagine Brownsville, borrowing $2.5 million from the PUB to balance the budget, and we can't get something as simple and basic as a drainage system established in our city?" he commented.
"There have to be some kind of priorities in the way we manage our resources," he said. "We shouldn't have to put up with this every time we get a hard rain."
A former city mayor put it even more bluntly: "Every time a dog takes a pee Boca Chica floods. We just don't have a working drainage system."
And if you think the residents inside the city have it hard, think of the residents in the outlying areas that have to do with Depression Era irrigation ditches making do as a drainage system. In the long run, both the city residents and the rural dwellers must depend on these antiquated ditches to handle the water runoff.
It's not working.
Those rural ditches now under the control of the various drainage districts that are linked to our resacas and retaining ponds hark back to the days when agriculture reigned in Southern Cameron County. In those days, the ditches were designed to bring water from the river to the fields. They were not designed to carry water away from and urbanized area such as Cameron County has become.
Yet, we are still not willing to bite the bullet and establish a countywide (or even a regional) drainage system that will address the needs of our growing area. A crop of sorghum or cotton can survive a few days of standing water. But if your house (as my friend's and his neighbors') floods for half an hour, you've got a disaster.
After every "flood" event when the county and city would apply for disaster funds, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) admonishes the entities to establish a drainage system that will; prevent the type of outcomes that the residents of this area have just endured.
Unfortunately, there has never been the political will to tackle this basic problem. The former Irrigation and Drainage District No. 1 in east Brownsville has now been converted into a drainage district with the wave of a pen. The system itself remains one designed to water crops, not to carry away runoff. Yet, now the district has the ability to have a board (appointed) and impose taxes on the residents there.
On July 2003, Cameron County Judge Gilbert Hinojosa appointed the crew at the district. The board of directors are Mercedes Cantu, president, Albert Barreda, secretary, and Ernesto Gamez, Jr., director.
This past weekend I visited a friend who lives off Eastern Street on Scott.
It had rained steadily all night and I had to leave my car at the Wal-Mart parking lot because it could not possibly traverse the flood waters that had overflowed the banks of the main drain ditch next to Perez elementary.
In fact, a whole 10-block section of the are was under water.
When I waded to his home, I found him sitting on a bed with the water rising about a foot high inside his house.
We walked outside behind the Seventh Day Adventist Church property and surveyed the flood.
"We're sinking millions into a Sports park, another million into something called Imagine Brownsville, borrowing $2.5 million from the PUB to balance the budget, and we can't get something as simple and basic as a drainage system established in our city?" he commented.
"There have to be some kind of priorities in the way we manage our resources," he said. "We shouldn't have to put up with this every time we get a hard rain."
A former city mayor put it even more bluntly: "Every time a dog takes a pee Boca Chica floods. We just don't have a working drainage system."
And if you think the residents inside the city have it hard, think of the residents in the outlying areas that have to do with Depression Era irrigation ditches making do as a drainage system. In the long run, both the city residents and the rural dwellers must depend on these antiquated ditches to handle the water runoff.
It's not working.
Those rural ditches now under the control of the various drainage districts that are linked to our resacas and retaining ponds hark back to the days when agriculture reigned in Southern Cameron County. In those days, the ditches were designed to bring water from the river to the fields. They were not designed to carry water away from and urbanized area such as Cameron County has become.
Yet, we are still not willing to bite the bullet and establish a countywide (or even a regional) drainage system that will address the needs of our growing area. A crop of sorghum or cotton can survive a few days of standing water. But if your house (as my friend's and his neighbors') floods for half an hour, you've got a disaster.
After every "flood" event when the county and city would apply for disaster funds, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) admonishes the entities to establish a drainage system that will; prevent the type of outcomes that the residents of this area have just endured.
Unfortunately, there has never been the political will to tackle this basic problem. The former Irrigation and Drainage District No. 1 in east Brownsville has now been converted into a drainage district with the wave of a pen. The system itself remains one designed to water crops, not to carry away runoff. Yet, now the district has the ability to have a board (appointed) and impose taxes on the residents there.
On July 2003, Cameron County Judge Gilbert Hinojosa appointed the crew at the district. The board of directors are Mercedes Cantu, president, Albert Barreda, secretary, and Ernesto Gamez, Jr., director.
What, you may ask, do these good people (especially legal eagle Gamez) know about hydrology and drainage? Probably not much. But they did know the late Pete Benavides, who along with Hinojosa, set about to create the district and expand its taxing reach.
The crews of the district now dedicate themselves to clearing undergrowth from the ditches and plant pretty flowers where the ditches run onto a public right-of-way. No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, the basic infrastructure remains basically the same. However, with a district, now one can regulate development to a degree and impose fees and requirements on developers that comply with city and county (and state) subdivision development rules.
The crews of the district now dedicate themselves to clearing undergrowth from the ditches and plant pretty flowers where the ditches run onto a public right-of-way. No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, the basic infrastructure remains basically the same. However, with a district, now one can regulate development to a degree and impose fees and requirements on developers that comply with city and county (and state) subdivision development rules.
Will Brownsville ever get serious about establishing a real drainage system? Or will people like my friend and his neighbors continue to put up with the results of that failure?
5 comments:
But I'll bet it didn't even flood at Charlie Atkinson's house.
Ren.
Didn't they spend millions of dollars to "fix" Boca Chica from the the expressway to the tracks a few years back?
Also, all that land on Boca Chica between Old Port Isabel and four corners (developed and undeveloped) belongs to an old Texas Govenor or Senator....anyone know his name?
Obviously our city commissioners have determined that the Sports Park is more important than drainage. The city commissioners, unfortunately reflect the view of citizens who bitch when the water threatens them, but then never fix the problem and spend any insurance money on "other" things. Brownsville is more a Mexican city than a U.S. city and the leadership is more Mexican than U.S. Thus, we swirl down the preverbial toilet and have no leadership. At the same time, corruption reins supreme. Instead of crying of making repairs....we can all go out to the sports park and be eaten by mosquitos.
I think all the land in that area is owned byLloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. (D, or the family trust of Bentsen. They lease it out, but we are stuck w/the maintenance of the surrounding areas (eg. drainage, streets, etc...)
But, the Sports Park, owned by Charlie Atkinson, gets all the money! What is it with this commission? Se salen, vatos y vatas!
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