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May
10, 2007
Good Water News
By
Jack D. McNamara
Every once and a
while we ask ourselves what’s happening with the water supply?
No subject of local government is more controversial here in Alpine. In
the 1950s water supplies became dangerously low and the assurance of
good water was not achieved until a well in Sunny Glen came in with
more than 200 gallons per minute.
Since then, however the wells in Sunny Glen have multiplied and the
city in 1972 gained the wonderfully productive Musquiz field as a gift
from Herbert Kokernot, Jr.
The sale of this water to users in Alpine and thereabouts brings in
revenue of more than a million dollars annually.
On April 26, 2002, however, the city was cited by the Texas Council of
Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for failing to maintain adequate water
pressure (35 gallons per minute by state standards) in southeast
Alpine. The report was covered up until the Nimby News dug it out of
the city in late July by a Texas Public Information Act (TPIA) request.
The worry about water, the ability of the city to provide it, the cost
and the integrity of city hall in the providing thereof are therefore
constant issues around here.
In the middle of March 2005 the city obtained approval from the Texas
Water Development Board (TWDB) for a $4.8 million loan at zero percent,
which includes a 15% grant. The purpose of the loan is to rehabilitate
the city water distribution system. We got the loan by pleading
poverty, just as we get other grants. Alpine’s median income was
$24,000 compared to a state median of $34,000.
Even though the city retained a new engineer, the schedule for actually
doing the job has slipped behind several times. It is now two years
since we got the commitment for the $4,860,000 and southeast water
pressure is still low.
So on March 13 we asked the TWDB, How come?
Over the course of a period of 10 days the TWDB answered me in a
timely, courteous and detailed fashion. By bouncing the question
between the city’s engineers (Naismith Engineers of Austin), the TWDB,
and the city we sorted it out.
The bottom line from TWDB is that the plans and specifications for a
booster pump were approved and the plans for the water distribution
system were ready for review as soon as the booster pump was bid.
Previously, delays were mainly local such as easements and time
consuming corrections of Alpine records. For the past few months the
delays were found in sluggish bureaucracies.
Last week the city opened bids ranging between $108,918 and $179,500
from four vendors. The project should be awarded at the next city
council meeting for a “preengineered nominal 1200 gallon per minute
Factory Mount Booster Pump Station” to be installed at the city yard in
south Alpine where it will transfer water from the million gallon tank
to the half million gallon tank and (alternatively) into the water
distribution system.
The advertisement for bids was in the Alpine Avalanche on April 19,
2007.
Yes, this is technical stuff. The reader might ask why the city has to
spend money to be able to pump water from one big tank to another, a
very pertinent question. Indeed it is a question one might have asked
more than 10 years ago when the two big tanks were being built.
The short answer is obvious in the fact that in early 2005 we got a new
engineer, Naismith. Shortly after we got a new city manager, Jesus
“Chuy” Garcia.
And on May 1 City Manager Garcia received a vote of confidence from the
peer review who know something about plumbing. Three plumbers — Johnny
Vick, John Hollis and Leman Barmore — came to city council to endorse
the city’s utility director, Mrs. Cindy Hollander.
For more than a year Mrs. Hollander has been under attack by a
contractor and one of his employees. Beginning April 1 a series of
articles in the “Border Hotline,” by Linda Bailey Potter, attacked Mrs.
Hollander’s work. The assertions by the critics are unfounded,
inaccurate and often unintelligible. City Manager Garcia refuted every
allegation on May 1 and then the plumbers who deal with Mrs. Hollander
endorsed her.
How do we get into these messes here? Obviously bad information is part
of the problem. Bad information originates in some cases from bad
government work. Or from the self-interest of those who report to the
public what they see and here.
“Bad journalism is better than no journalism at all” remains our 20
years’ observation of small town politics. Bad journalism gives us
endless employment in getting the record straight, as we have done
today. But above all bad journalism reminds us that America is not
perfect … not yet at least. There is no fail-safe formula for a quiet
and orderly democracy, no Platonic philosopher kings to arbitrate all
our quarrels.
Though all the winds of doctrine were
let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be
in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to
misdoubt her
strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the
worse,
in a free and open encounter?
— John Milton
Areopagitica
1644
(Also published by
the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas May 10, 2007.)
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