Another amazing Mayor Brown money pit! Just a note -- this is the area of land obtained by the city in Waller county where they proposed a West Side airport, diddled around, then decided another airport wasn't needed. They decided to use this to offset swamps lost in an Intercontinental Airport expansion, and are now using it to block Waller county's efforts to build a regional or cargo airport. -- They promised them an airport, and Brown is giving them a multi million dollar swamp. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/898621 Why is Houston pouring millions into a swamp? -- BY JUDGE GLENN TAYLOR While Houston Mayor Lee Brown has announced the likelihood of yet another budget shortfall that will require the city to borrow money from its water and sewer funds, the city's Aviation Department is planning to spend millions of dollars unnecessarily to create man-made swamps in Waller and Montgomery counties. To expand Bush Intercontinental Airport, the city must mitigate (replace) wetlands that will be destroyed in that process. The original plan called for mitigation of approximately 120 acres that would be destroyed in the expansion process. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 9, 2001, that the designation of wetlands, under the Clean Water Act, is applicable to navigable waterways and adjacent waters only. As a result, 22 days after the high court's decision was handed down, the lead federal agency overseeing wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, redefined Intercontinental's mitigation requirements from 120 acres to 12.9 acres. Inexplicably, despite this quick and favorable response from the controlling federal agency, the city Aviation Department decided to stick with its original plan to mitigate for 120 acres. Further, it is now mitigating at a laughable rate of 176 replacement acres to one acre of affected land. At a recent meeting of Houston City Council, Rick Vacar, director of aviation for the city, was asked how much this would cost Houston. He responded that the department did not know. Waller County can help him ascertain a portion of his costs. To relocate the necessary soil from Intercontinental to the 640 acres in Waller County that his plan calls for will require 258,133 cubic yards to be transported 45 miles. The cost, including loading and spreading, will be $2.56 million. That does not include the cost of fuel for the 17,208 truckloads that will be required to transport the soil, nor does it include the intangibles -- wear on the roads, added pollution -- that all contribute to the cost of this exercise. In addition, the value of the property itself, based on its sale price to the city 16 years ago, is $5.7 million. That amounts to a total cost to Houston taxpayers of $8.26 million, not including the ongoing cost of water and maintenance to create and sustain this swamp, or the cost of the 900-acre Montgomery County property and its attendant expenses. That would fix a lot of potholes on Houston's streets. On the other hand, the Aviation Department has had the option of buying mitigation bank credits from locally established mitigation banks, natural vs. artificial wetlands, such as the Harris County Flood Control District's Greens Bayou Mitigation Bank. That cost would be less than $500,000 with no ongoing (operating) expenses. Further it would retain the $5.7 million property in Waller County as an asset that could be used for additional revenue through sale in the future, perhaps offsetting these annual budget shortfalls. In a misguided attempt to spend taxpayer money unnecessarily on the creation of this swamp in Waller County, the city of Houston appears to have ignored or missed the favorable Supreme Court ruling and subsequent Corps of Engineers re-evaluation. If the Brown administration follows through with its plan to create a 640-acre swamp on this land in Waller County, that property and surrounding properties would be lost for development purposes, effectively reducing the availability of developable land in Waller County by 10 percent to 15 percent. Further, it permanently removes that acreage from the tax rolls, forcing Waller County to either substantially increase property taxes in the county, or drastically cut services. For this unnecessary swamp, Houston taxpayers foot the burden of its construction, development and ongoing management. Waller County taxpayers lose valuable properties that could help support its tax base and development in the county. The Brown administration and its Aviation Department must come to grips with economic and environmental realities and seek the most practical and cost-effective solutions to its mitigation problems at Intercontinental or the taxpayers of Houston and Waller County will continue to bear the burden of this blunder for decades to come. ------------------ Stay Cool...
