Some time ago Commissioner Bill Williams held a public meeting in Center Point announcing a proposed sewage project which would collect and transport raw sewage along a pipeline north of Highway 27 to the Comfort wastewater treatment plant. Later Commissioners Williams and Letz found a property owner willing to sell land for a sewage treatment plant in Center Point—-thus the project expanded to a sewage treatment plant in Center Point.

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority has been working on a water project for the Center Point Area for several years. Their proposal includes using their river pumping rights to pull water from the river, treat the water, store it in an ASR and sell it wholesale to the public water systems in the area such as Aqua Texas and Weidenfeld Water Works.

Now the two projects seem to have merged or perhaps the original or total plan was just not revealed at the Center Point meeting which served as the required public hearing for the sewage project. We now know the targeted property for the sewage treatment plant (County Commissioners) and water treatment plant (UGRA) is across from the Center Point little league fields. The water will be drawn from the Center Point Lions Park Lake. One of the public water supply systems has a dry well which is being considered for the ASR storage. The additional cost to each individual residential water user in Center Point has been projected to be $70 per month when last mentioned.

Environmental Impact studies and archeological studies must be done before such projects can move forward. The Texas Water Development Board staff has required such studies from the UGRA but our UGRA Board of Directors has now gone around the TWDB staff and sent a letter directly to the TWDB Board of Directors asking them to intervene and allow the water treatment plant to use the studies from the wastewater project.

Have environmental impact and archeological studies already been done on the county commissioners sewer project? Does the grant money we were told about at the Center Point hearing really pay all the costs of this monumental project? What is the real impact of locating these plants on the Highway 27 corridor? Should Center Point and Kerr County citizens be given an open hearing and update on these projects?

F. Lovett