WHOSE ROAD IT IT ANYWAY? "DIME PALOMA BLANCA POR CUAL ME VOY"

By Juan Montoya

Two months and thousands of dollars and man hours ago, the Cameron County Transportation Department through its Public Works and Engineering components decided to improve Paloma Blanca Road that lies between Maverick and Southmost roads in rural southeast Brownsville.

It was a no-brainer.

The road, once paved, has been eroded by use and bad drainage from vegetation-choked ditches and now only showed spots where small patches of pavement remained. Even the caliche base was sparse. When it rained, the roads became a quagmire because it lacked the cleared bar ditches needed for the rainwater to drain.

All along the road, homeowners were glad to have the county fix the

road and gladly complied with the county crews in placing new driveway cement pipes that the crews then covered with caliche up to the property line.

Everyone of the property owners was all for the improvements, which among other things, included using gravity bar ditches leading to large concrete drain boxes that funneled the runoff water to nearby feeder ditches.

Everyone, that is, except for one at the corner of Del Rio and Paloma Blanca where the drain boxes were to divert the water to the feeder ditch.

That was a property owner named Guy Huddleson. His property, lying almost exactly on the middle of the project on the east side of Paloma Blanca, was critical to the project because the feeder boxes were located strategically to empty into the ditch running east along Del Rio Road abutted the north side of his property.

"We have been going on and off with him for about two months about the project and at first he said yes, and then said no," said a Public Works worker at the site. "Then, after we thought he had agreed to the improvements, he wants us to cover the ditches along the section of the road along his property and to take out the boxes."

And so, on Monday and Tuesday, after months of leveling the road, compacting a tons of caliche costing thousands of dollars to make a firm base, purchasing the boxes for about $8,000 and expanding

the man hours and heavy machinery to finish the project, workers were made to cover the ditches facing Huddleson's property with dirt and remove the boxes that were to funnel the runoff water into the feeder ditches.

(On the picture on top, workers remove pipes below the road that would divert rain water from one side of the road to the other and into a concrete drain box visible below the backhoe. On the left, workers also were made to cover the ditch running along the side of Huddleson's property and remove the drain box, effectively preventing the runoff from the neighborhood to the south of his property.)

Additionally, they also had to remove the concrete pipes that ran under Paloma Blanca and were to divert the rain water from the bar ditch on the west side of Paloma Blanca across the road and into the feeder ditch.

Questions to the Precinct 1 supervisor on the reason why the project was stopped and Huddleson's section of the road were unanswered because of his consultations with the county's right-of-way officer.

A former county foreman remembered that Huddleson had been involved in several disputes with the county crews in the past. In one instance decades ago, he had complained because a county worker had cut down a tree that had grown in the middle of the ditch across Paloma Blanca from his property. In another, he said that Huddleson had received thousands of dollars in payment from the county after crews had removed a Sabal palm with a charred trunk from the roadside alongside his property.

"Apparently, when the old irrigation district shut down and abandoned the easements along Paloma Blanca, the property reverted to the property owners," he said. "Someone in the county apparently neglected to note that the road is not dedicated and that the road easements were never procured. Someone at Engineering, Right-of-Way and Public Works fells asleep at the wheel on this one."

For now, however, after thousands of dollars in materials and man hours have been expended, the project has apparently come to a stop. Even though the property owners on either side of Huddleson's property enthusiastically support the improvements on the road to prevent flooding and erosion of the road, the county and Huddleson are at an impasse.

However, without access to that feeder ditch, the water will now have to travel more than another 100 t0 200 yards north before it can be diverted and flooding to neighborhood prevented.

"It's frustrating how one man can stop a project that will not only benefit him, but all of his neighbors," said a resident there. "Surely someone can do something about this so that the benefits of the project can be realized."