RENE CARDENAS: "DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS MY FAMILY DOES."

(Ed.'s Note: The hypocritical address given by Rene Cardenas during the public comment at a city commission meeting where he questioned the commitment of public officials to act with integrity and righteousness left a few of us wondering why he didn't demand that from members of his own family. So we dug into our files and came up with a Cardenas-engineered colonia development that has resulted in the county using public resources to address the mess created by his brother Ricky. The colonia is built on a flood zone and that's exactly what residents endure after a moderate rainfall.)































By Juan Montoya
In a classic case of a misnomer, the low-income residents of a subdivision called Laguna Seca in Cameron County Precinct 2 have been pumping weeks after after the recent storms when the development turns it into a very wet lake.

Officially, the subdivision is recorded with the county as the Hacienda Del Norte Subdivision.
In fact, the subdivision floods just about every time there's a heavy downpour.

And the developer, who has installed a permanent tractor with a pump for that very purpose, has now washed his hands of the whole messy affair leaving the residents to fend off on their own.
Cameron County Pct. 2 Commissioner Alex Dominguez, who never imagined he'd be involved doing the work of a drainage district, now has his hands full answering the complaints of the irate property owners who bought their lots from Quinta-Anita Inc.

The president of Quinta-Anita is Rick Cardenas. According to the records on file, the original owners of Quinta-Anita were Cardenas and the late Raul Tijerina.
"Some of them didn't even know they had deeds," Dominguez said. "The county is really not responsible for pumping water from their lots. But we are trying to help them out as much as we can."

The problems begin soon after the subdivision was filed with the county.
 City ordinance require that:
"The closest corner of the proposed
subdivision shall be at a distance of more than 500 feet, as measured along the proposed sewer line, from a public gravity sanitary sewer system, and the proposed subdivision shall contain no more than one parcel for each 50-foot length of such distance beyond 500 feet including any fractions of such 50-foot lengths."

The subdivision is in the City of Brownsville's Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction and there is no public sanitary sewer service available. Accordingly, on-site sanitary systems (septic tanks) are used by the residents.

Half of the subdivision is located in Flood Zone A O:
Zone AO is defined as an area inundated by 1 percent annual chance flooding (usually sheet flow on sloping
terrain), for which average depths have been determined; flood depths range from 1 to 3 feet. According to FEMA guidelines, "Some Zone AO have been designated in areas with high flood velocities such as alluvial fans and washes. Communities are encouraged to adopt more restrictive requirements for these areas."

When the subdivision plat was submitted to the county in the early 1990s, it included a large lot to be used as a retention pond (see top graphic at bottom center of the subdivision). The deeds sold to residents state that they were to form a home owners' association with lien-assessing authority to maintain the pond.

Some residents have told Dominguez and his assistants that they didn't even know the covenant existed. With lots selling between $17,000 to $24,000, it is doubtful that many would even understand what the covenant was.


"Some didn't even know that that meant," he said. "They didn't know they were supposed to maintain the pond."


When the flooding began way back when, the county asked Cardenas about maintenance of the pump he had provided for the pond and on April 1996, he wrote the county engineer "Please be advised that a homeowners association (is responsible) for the maintenance of s service pump to be used in the detention pond located in Section II of the (subdivision)."

Since the site is more than two miles into the city's ETJ, subdivision rules passed at the time did not require Cardenas to provide sidewalks, curb and gutter or city-grade streets. Residents soon faced the daunting task of getting rid of flood waters that often rose to house level.

That pump, however, proved to be too little to remove the standing water that literally created a lake. The problem was compounded with the health hazard created when on-site sewer systems (septic tanks) overflowed.

Dominguez and the county crews spent the better part of three days with the Gator (pump) working 24 hours. For five days they used two 2,000 gallon tanker trucks from Pct. 2 Public Works.
Former Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner John Wood remembers the subdivision well. He said that the flooding has been chronic and that the pump at the subdivision often broke down and couldn't handle the volume of water that flooded it periodically.

"The developer basically washed his hands of the problem and didn't want anything to do with it," he said.
To add to the problem, the landowners adjacent to the subdivision at first allowed the residents to pump the water into their fields, but with the potential contamination from the septic and other detritus, they were no longer willing to continue the practice.

Since the subdivision is located outside of any drainage district, the water has to be carried in pipes and through bar ditches to the nearest irrigation ditch.

With hurricane season under way, it the problems associated with flooding and health hazards from overflowing septic tanks is not going to go away. The way the city is growing, it may not be long before annexation and may require a huge outlay to bring it up to city specifications.

And with Cardenas basically saying it is the residents' baby, and with no easy solution in sight, it is unlikely that Dominguez, the current tenant at the Pct. 2 helm, has heard the last of it.