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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is expected to make a ruling soon on a wastewater treatment plant for the proposed Guajolote Ranch subdivision in northwest Bexar County. Both the city and county will have to approve the project as well.
Bexar County commissioners are expected to take up the matter after the TCEQ makes its ruling, by approving or denying a request from Lennar Homes and its partner, Municipal Operations LLC for a Public Improvement District (PID).
The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance opposes the project because it calls for the county to create the district and appoint a seven-member board of directors to govern it. It would assume the same power of the county government, including the ability to issue bonds to finance the wastewater plant and other infrastructure. It would impose property, sales and use taxes on those living in and doing business in the development to pay it back.
Michael Phillips is with the Alliance and also serves on the Grey Forest City Council, an area that would be directly affected by water discharged into Helotes Creek.
“This $138 million PID would be paid for through bonds that would be essentially it would be an extra tax on the homeowners who buy into the Guajolote. Bexar County would facilitate the bonds, but not pay for them,” he said on TPR’s “The Source” on Wednesday.
“This $138 million PID would finance the entire infrastructure of the Guajolote Ranch development, which would include the wastewater treatment facility, the roads, curbs, lights, everything that goes within that property,” he added.
The planned Lennar subdivision near Scenic Loop and Babcock roads would place 2,900 homes on about 1,100 acres. The wastewater treatment plant could dump as much as one to four million gallons per day of wastewater into Helotes Creek.
Opponents say the wastewater plant could contaminate the Edwards Aquifer, which provides water for 1.7 million residents across 13 South and Central Texas counties.
