Are these people not taxpayers of Nueces County?
County works to alleviate Colonias drainage woes
July 7, 2007 06:38 PM
 | ||
 | ||
 | ||
| ||
| ||
CORPUS CHRISTI - Colonias residents have been dealing with standing water and a funky odor since the recent rain. They want the county to step up and fix the drainage problems, and Nueces County Commissioner Betty Jean Longoria said the county is working on a plan.
No further work has been done on it because the two grants the county applied for were denied
Residents living in the county's three Colonias said both their yards and nearby ditches are filled with water, polluted with overflow from septic tanks.
Residents living in Rose Acres, Tierra Grande and Petronila Estates said enough is enough. Those residents said the county needs to fix the drainage problems. The rain has come and gone, transforming yards at the Tierra Grande Colonia into ponds and ditches into dark pools of water filled with mosquitos, debris and even human feces.
That messy combination is overflowing into yards from flooded septic systems. County officials said this Colonia was hardest hit by the rains.
At Rose Acres Colonia, residents like Mario Rodriguez are dealing with similar problems. Rodriguez is now forced to deal with the standing water and the fowl smell it's left behind.
"Definitely they need to do more," Ramirez said. "I don't think they have done nothing, nothing at all. They need to do more about it. You can see that water is not running fast enough."
Ramirez said conditions are so bad in his neighborhood that he's worried about his kids' safety.
"Actually, my kids, they've got to stay inside all the time. I don't want them to come outside at all," he said.
Ramirez said parts of his yard have flooded at least three times since he moved into his home a year ago.
Angie Torres has lived in the Tierra Grande Colonia since 1978 and has tried to get help with the drainage out here, but said nothing was ever done.
"If we wait for someone to give us something, they are not going to give us anything," Torres said. "We need to work for everything."
Torres said her neighbors have added dirt to their properties to help alleviate the flooding, but many feel the county needs to step in and fix the drainage problems once and for all.
County officials said it will take several weeks for this water to dry up. Longoria said the county is working on a multi-million dollar plan that would help improve drainage in the Colonias.
Longoria toured each of the four Colonias in Nueces County, and she was surprised by what she saw.
"It does look better than what I've seen it before," Longoria said. "I've seen this road full, the sad thing about it is we just did all this road work."
But pot holes are just some of the problems the flood waters are creating out there, and Longoria said she's been working on a plan for the past four years that would improve drainage in these areas that are now filled with standing water.
"Along the county, ditches don't lead anywhere, so that's the reason you have standing water," Longoria said. "They aren't going anywhere; they aren't going anywhere because they don't have an outlet for the water."
Longoria said the county wide drainage plan has hit some snags along the way.
"If I drain this area, this ditch, and other ditches, all I'm going to do is flood someone down steam, and I was told that by more than one engineer," she said.
So commissioners have gone back to the drawing board to come up with a design that would help get this water flowing again, and they are also considering a county-wide drainage district that would collect taxes to help alleviate the flooding.
"I don't want that plan developed," Longoria said. "I want that plan done, and it's not a matter of being completed in a year, and I don't know enough about it yet, where I can tell the citizens it's going to be completed in five years, two years or what."
The county has $800,000 in state money to help fund the drainage plan, but the total cost of the project is expected run millions of dollars.
Online Reporter: Roxanne Carrillo
No comments:
Post a Comment