Dam authority let rules lapse | Denton Record Chronicle | News for Dento...
Watershed structures nearing end of life span, in need of maintenance
12:42 PM CDT on Sunday, April 1, 2007
By Monty Miller Jr. / Staff Writer
ST. JO — The board of directors of the watershed authority that controls flooding for much of North Texashas skirted the law for more than 40 years by failing to hold the required elections, keep proper records andmaintain its dams, according to an investigation by the Denton Record-Chronicle.
The Clear Creek Watershed Authority, which maintains 70 dams in four counties — Denton, Cooke,Montague and Wise — has had little state or federal oversight and almost no local public interest in the entitythat taxes about 4,000 people. Only recently has the board begun to update its record-keeping systems andbring them into compliance with election and record-keeping laws.
The problem for the board is that the state and federal government, namely the federal government’s NaturalResources Conservation Service, has not lived up to its commitments to maintain the dams, said Neil Bowie, aboard member who serves as vice president, secretary and general manager of the authority.
“Nobody cares anymore,” Bowie said. “They [federal and state agencies] all assume ... everyone justassumes,” that another agency is responsible, he said.
Steve Bednarz, assistant state conservationist for the conservation service, said that the watershed authorityshould have been performing inspections and maintenance throughout the years and that the authority isultimately responsible for the dams.
“The Clear Creek Watershed Authority is obligated to the NRCS to do the operation and maintenance of thedams,” Bednarz said. “They are ultimately responsible.”
One taxpayer in the authority presented possible illegalities regarding the authority’s elections and record-keeping to the Denton County Sheriff’s Office last week, and sheriff’s officials say they are investigating. Thecase more than likely will be turned over to the Texas Rangers, said sheriff’s spokesman Tom Reedy.
What happens with the Clear Creek dams is important to the Dallas-Fort Worth area because the dams keeptons of sediment from entering Lewisville Lake, a primary source of drinking water for the Dallas area. Thedams also keep floodwaters upstream from the lake, which keeps it from flooding — as it almost did during asevere storm in 1981.
“All the water held high in the watershed was kept from entering into Lake Lewisville” during the 1981storm, Bowie said. “But that dam was almost breached.”
Keeping an eye on the dams
In the 1950s and 1960s, about 10,000 dams were built all over the country with federal money. The NaturalResources Conservation Service supported the creation of 144 watershed projects in Texas, including theClear Creek Watershed Authority, to assume responsibility for the dams’ engineering, maintenance and
administration.
For the past 15 years, state and federal involvement became less and less, and Clear Creek’s small, unelectedboard of directors kept collecting tax money from residents. It is unclear exactly how the board spent thatmoney over the years, since record-keeping before 2003 was spotty, said board President Al Testa.
Most of the records from the 1960s through the 1990s have been lost because the authority didn’t haveoffices or supplies in those days, he said.
“I think most of that [the records] would have been in the hands of the people that were given theresponsibility for them,” Testa said.
Bowie said the boards in years past were “like a gentleman’s club.”
“Guys would sit around eating little beanie-weenies or something,” Bowie said. “They mentally werethinking, ‘If there is something that needs to be done, the NRCS will tell us.’”
Another troubling aspect of the board’s authority, Bowie said, is that the dams are nearing their original50-year life spans, and a dam break could be imminent.
Bowie compares the dam situation with the levees in New Orleans, which, once thought to be safe, turned outnot to be with the impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Also, because of a lack of regulation, people are building homes directly inside the high-risk flood zones nearthese dams.
“What you really need to do is keep people out of these areas,” Bowie said.
But many residents living in the authority just don’t trust the board’s assessment of the danger.
Appointed, not elected
At the authority’s headquarters in a nondescript building in downtown St. Jo, there are no records of anyelections ever being held, and few records of financial transactions until 2003. There are also virtually norecords of what happened to the tax money the authority collected throughout its 48-year history.
In 2004, the board, for the first time, followed the proper procedure for calling an election for new boardmembers by filing the required documents with the Texas secretary of state’s office. Only six candidatessubmitted applications to run.
Board minutes for Nov. 20, 2003, show that the directors were unaware that they were even on a board thatwas supposed to be elected. Until then, all board members had been appointed.
Minutes from that meeting also show that the board had contacted the Abernathy, Roeder, Boyd & Joplin lawfirm, based in McKinney, to inquire about the legislation that created the watershed, the boundaries of thewatershed and the laws that govern the body. This is the first time the board of directors ever inquired aboutthe laws they were required to follow, according to available records.
The law firm responded to the board by reporting that the directors “were required to be elected” and theboundaries did not include any territory “located within the incorporated limits of any city,” which excludedthe city of Sanger. Nobody knows exactly why Sanger was excluded from paying the tax, only that the
Legislature passed an amendment in 1983 excluding incorporated areas from paying to watershed authorities.
After researching election laws, the board called a special election for Feb. 7, 2004, to fill the nine vacancieson the board, since none of the directors had ever legally been elected or appointed.
“Technically, they should have had a special election to fill vacancies in February, and came back in May tohave the general election,” said Denton County Elections Administrator Don Alexander, who met withmembers of the board in 2004.
The board seemed to be making an attempt to come into compliance at that time, Alexander said. Most of theproblems with the election paperwork looked as if they stemmed from clerical errors and not malice on thepart of the directors, Alexander said.
For example, the applications for a seat on the board in the February 2004 elections should have been filed,signed and dated by a member of the board when they were received. However, the six applications werenever signed or dated by anyone, so the dates they were turned in cannot be verified.
Bill Buckalew, a retired industrial engineer living in Forestburg, was one of the six who filed to run for aboard of directors seat.
“I enjoy it,” Buckalew said of his service on the board. “We have our meetings and we get to see how to runthis type of thing.”
Because no board candidate was opposed, the election was canceled and the six men were appointed to theboard. One has since resigned and moved out of state.
Board members called for an election to be held in May 2006, but since the candidates were not opposed, theelection was lawfully canceled.
In board meeting minutes dated May 19, 2006, however, the board discussed the fact that there were onlyfive directors on the board, even though the legislation creating the watershed called for a nine-memberboard. The minutes of the meeting state that the board passed a resolution to be governed by section 51.071of the Water Code, which calls for a five-member board instead of a nine-member board.
Watershed taxpayer and Denton County resident John Holstead said he went to an authority board meeting inNovember to inquire about running for a board seat, but that Bowie told him he could not run.
“First, they moved the meeting from Gainesville to St. Jo, where there are no signs, not even a number on thebuilding,” Holstead said. “Then, I go in the building and they [board members] go in this room for about 10minutes, with the door locked.”
After he was allowed to enter the room, he said, he was denied a packet for candidacy on the board.
“He [Bowie] said there aren’t any openings on this board,” Holstead said. “Then he said, ‘because to be amember of this board, you’ve got to have a financial background, legal or engineering, and a lot of commonsense, and you don’t have any of them.’”
Meeting minutes state that Holstead was at the board meeting, and that he was “generally hostile, accusatory,and insulting.” Bowie, however, denies treating Holstead unfairly.
Other allegations have been made, though, by a number of residents living within the authority who say boardmembers are inaccessible and are making rules that will affect everyone in the watershed without properrepresentation.Denton County resident Kathy Pedroso, who lives just north of Bolivar, noticed her tax bills for thewatershed authority were getting higher over the last few years.
“We went to the [Denton County] tax office to dispute the increase in taxes,” Pedroso said. “They gave us a[phone] number that wasn’t valid. They gave us about three different numbers and none of them worked.”
Pedroso said when she finally did reach Bowie, he wasn’t much help, and now won’t return her phone calls.
“It’s worrisome that the only person who can answer these questions won’t talk to us,” she said.
Bowie said the board published notices about the proposed increased tax rate and held meetings for the publicto comment.
“I don’t recall any conversations with Mr. or Mrs. Pedroso,” Bowie said. “We held a public hearing and not asingle person showed up.”
Taxes to pay for the dams
In 2004, taxpayers in the watershed paid a tax rate of 1 cent per $100 valuation, meaning that a person whoowns a $100,000 home in the watershed paid $10 in taxes. Over the next two years, the taxes were raised to3.5 cents per $100 valuation, and then to 6.5 cents, where it is today, meaning the $100,000 homeowner nowpays $65 a year.
The reason for the tax increases over the past few years, Bowie said, is that the dams in question aredeteriorating and the watershed can’t afford to maintain all 70 dams, let alone fix them.
The tax increases allowed the watershed to hire an engineer to inspect the dams. Also, work has begun on an$800,000 job to fix fences surrounding the dams that keep cattle away, Bowie said. Otherwise, cattle grazingand erosion causes an unstable foundation for the dams, he said.
When Bowie was appointed to the board in December 2003, he began keeping records of meetings andinvestigating the dam infrastructures, which he said were inadequate at best and downright dangerous atworst.
“Over the years, the watershed operated with little more than cosmetic maintenance,” Bowie said.
He found that most dams had gone years without a single inspection and no significant maintenance, but theofficials in the four counties were still allowing people to build homes directly beneath the deteriorating dams.
Some residents, though, have complained the board doesn’t make those arguments to the people actuallyliving in the watershed.
“No one was aware of the Clear Creek Watershed, so people like me have bought land under and aroundthese dams,” said Denton County resident Doug Ragsdale, who owns a four-acre lot near a dam, north ofBolivar. “I won’t be able to resell. I’m basically stuck with it.”
He also said that in conversations between Bowie and Ragsdale’s real estate agent, Bowie spoke in athreatening manner.
“Bowie told my Realtor that if someone were to build on the land, they were going to have to come after us.It was basically nothing short of the Gestapo,” Ragsdale said. “To this day, though, the county still says I can build there.”
Bowie said he talked to Ragsdale’s real estate agent but never threatened anyone. He also said the property inquestion was directly below a dam, which would put anyone living on that property in immediate danger.“Common sense would tell you, you couldn’t build a home right underneath that dam,” he said.
Bowie said people think because county officials don’t stop them from building in a certain area, that meansit’s safe. That’s not true, he said. Officials are usually unaware of the existence of the dam or are relying onoutdated maps, he said. When state officials find that someone has built below one of the dams, they issue thewatershed an order to rebuild or maintain the dam, which is utterly impossible with the watershed’s small taxbase, Bowie said.
That is why the tax rate was raised so dramatically over the past two years, Bowie said.
“Say there is an interstate and someone comes along and builds a house right on the shoulder. Then the statecomes in and says you have to build an overpass over that house to protect it. It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
As of 2007, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service Web site, the total cost forrehabilitation needs for dams in Texas is $200 million, and federal funding for watershed operations hasdwindled from a high of $28 million in 2006 to zero dollars in 2007.
Bednarz said the U.S. Congress is working on some watershed projects, but that Congress is funding only therehabilitation of high-hazard dams.
According to the conservation service, 217 dams in Texas have been classified as “high hazard,” and of those,only five dams have been rehabilitated to date. One dam inside Clear Creek has been classified as high-hazard— a dam just northwest of Sanger. It was classified as high-hazard because one home was built in the areathat is nearly guaranteed to flood if the dam is breached, Bowie said.
“Hazard ratings refer to the potential for loss of life in the event of a dam failure,” Bowie said. “It has nothingto do with the condition of the dam.”
Erik With, district director for U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Flower Mound, said he attended a recent ClearCreek Watershed meeting on behalf of the congressman.
“The congressman likes to send representatives to meetings like these in his district,” With said, adding thatBurgess wants to follow what’s going on with the authority.
Bednarz said that the Clear Creek Watershed has applied for federal funding to help rehabilitate some of itsdams, but that the application is in its beginning stages. Sometime between now and May, he said, the NaturalResources Conservation Service will inspect some of the dam sites and develop a rehabilitation plan. Then theconservation service would have to get that plan approved and request funding, meaning that work would notbegin until 2009.
Meanwhile, the all-volunteer board will work closely with any state or federal agency that chooses toinvestigate the authority’s affairs, Bowie said.
“We have followed every law we know to follow,” Bowie said. “We’ve made every effort to comply and I’mnot aware of any area that we’ve failed.”
MONTY MILLER JR. can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is mwmiller@dentonrc.com.
Watershed structures nearing end of life span, in need of maintenance
12:42 PM CDT on Sunday, April 1, 2007
By Monty Miller Jr. / Staff Writer
ST. JO — The board of directors of the watershed authority that controls flooding for much of North Texashas skirted the law for more than 40 years by failing to hold the required elections, keep proper records andmaintain its dams, according to an investigation by the Denton Record-Chronicle.
The Clear Creek Watershed Authority, which maintains 70 dams in four counties — Denton, Cooke,Montague and Wise — has had little state or federal oversight and almost no local public interest in the entitythat taxes about 4,000 people. Only recently has the board begun to update its record-keeping systems andbring them into compliance with election and record-keeping laws.
The problem for the board is that the state and federal government, namely the federal government’s NaturalResources Conservation Service, has not lived up to its commitments to maintain the dams, said Neil Bowie, aboard member who serves as vice president, secretary and general manager of the authority.
“Nobody cares anymore,” Bowie said. “They [federal and state agencies] all assume ... everyone justassumes,” that another agency is responsible, he said.
Steve Bednarz, assistant state conservationist for the conservation service, said that the watershed authorityshould have been performing inspections and maintenance throughout the years and that the authority isultimately responsible for the dams.
“The Clear Creek Watershed Authority is obligated to the NRCS to do the operation and maintenance of thedams,” Bednarz said. “They are ultimately responsible.”
One taxpayer in the authority presented possible illegalities regarding the authority’s elections and record-keeping to the Denton County Sheriff’s Office last week, and sheriff’s officials say they are investigating. Thecase more than likely will be turned over to the Texas Rangers, said sheriff’s spokesman Tom Reedy.
What happens with the Clear Creek dams is important to the Dallas-Fort Worth area because the dams keeptons of sediment from entering Lewisville Lake, a primary source of drinking water for the Dallas area. Thedams also keep floodwaters upstream from the lake, which keeps it from flooding — as it almost did during asevere storm in 1981.
“All the water held high in the watershed was kept from entering into Lake Lewisville” during the 1981storm, Bowie said. “But that dam was almost breached.”
Keeping an eye on the dams
In the 1950s and 1960s, about 10,000 dams were built all over the country with federal money. The NaturalResources Conservation Service supported the creation of 144 watershed projects in Texas, including theClear Creek Watershed Authority, to assume responsibility for the dams’ engineering, maintenance and
administration.
For the past 15 years, state and federal involvement became less and less, and Clear Creek’s small, unelectedboard of directors kept collecting tax money from residents. It is unclear exactly how the board spent thatmoney over the years, since record-keeping before 2003 was spotty, said board President Al Testa.
Most of the records from the 1960s through the 1990s have been lost because the authority didn’t haveoffices or supplies in those days, he said.
“I think most of that [the records] would have been in the hands of the people that were given theresponsibility for them,” Testa said.
Bowie said the boards in years past were “like a gentleman’s club.”
“Guys would sit around eating little beanie-weenies or something,” Bowie said. “They mentally werethinking, ‘If there is something that needs to be done, the NRCS will tell us.’”
Another troubling aspect of the board’s authority, Bowie said, is that the dams are nearing their original50-year life spans, and a dam break could be imminent.
Bowie compares the dam situation with the levees in New Orleans, which, once thought to be safe, turned outnot to be with the impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Also, because of a lack of regulation, people are building homes directly inside the high-risk flood zones nearthese dams.
“What you really need to do is keep people out of these areas,” Bowie said.
But many residents living in the authority just don’t trust the board’s assessment of the danger.
Appointed, not elected
At the authority’s headquarters in a nondescript building in downtown St. Jo, there are no records of anyelections ever being held, and few records of financial transactions until 2003. There are also virtually norecords of what happened to the tax money the authority collected throughout its 48-year history.
In 2004, the board, for the first time, followed the proper procedure for calling an election for new boardmembers by filing the required documents with the Texas secretary of state’s office. Only six candidatessubmitted applications to run.
Board minutes for Nov. 20, 2003, show that the directors were unaware that they were even on a board thatwas supposed to be elected. Until then, all board members had been appointed.
Minutes from that meeting also show that the board had contacted the Abernathy, Roeder, Boyd & Joplin lawfirm, based in McKinney, to inquire about the legislation that created the watershed, the boundaries of thewatershed and the laws that govern the body. This is the first time the board of directors ever inquired aboutthe laws they were required to follow, according to available records.
The law firm responded to the board by reporting that the directors “were required to be elected” and theboundaries did not include any territory “located within the incorporated limits of any city,” which excludedthe city of Sanger. Nobody knows exactly why Sanger was excluded from paying the tax, only that the
Legislature passed an amendment in 1983 excluding incorporated areas from paying to watershed authorities.
After researching election laws, the board called a special election for Feb. 7, 2004, to fill the nine vacancieson the board, since none of the directors had ever legally been elected or appointed.
“Technically, they should have had a special election to fill vacancies in February, and came back in May tohave the general election,” said Denton County Elections Administrator Don Alexander, who met withmembers of the board in 2004.
The board seemed to be making an attempt to come into compliance at that time, Alexander said. Most of theproblems with the election paperwork looked as if they stemmed from clerical errors and not malice on thepart of the directors, Alexander said.
For example, the applications for a seat on the board in the February 2004 elections should have been filed,signed and dated by a member of the board when they were received. However, the six applications werenever signed or dated by anyone, so the dates they were turned in cannot be verified.
Bill Buckalew, a retired industrial engineer living in Forestburg, was one of the six who filed to run for aboard of directors seat.
“I enjoy it,” Buckalew said of his service on the board. “We have our meetings and we get to see how to runthis type of thing.”
Because no board candidate was opposed, the election was canceled and the six men were appointed to theboard. One has since resigned and moved out of state.
Board members called for an election to be held in May 2006, but since the candidates were not opposed, theelection was lawfully canceled.
In board meeting minutes dated May 19, 2006, however, the board discussed the fact that there were onlyfive directors on the board, even though the legislation creating the watershed called for a nine-memberboard. The minutes of the meeting state that the board passed a resolution to be governed by section 51.071of the Water Code, which calls for a five-member board instead of a nine-member board.
Watershed taxpayer and Denton County resident John Holstead said he went to an authority board meeting inNovember to inquire about running for a board seat, but that Bowie told him he could not run.
“First, they moved the meeting from Gainesville to St. Jo, where there are no signs, not even a number on thebuilding,” Holstead said. “Then, I go in the building and they [board members] go in this room for about 10minutes, with the door locked.”
After he was allowed to enter the room, he said, he was denied a packet for candidacy on the board.
“He [Bowie] said there aren’t any openings on this board,” Holstead said. “Then he said, ‘because to be amember of this board, you’ve got to have a financial background, legal or engineering, and a lot of commonsense, and you don’t have any of them.’”
Meeting minutes state that Holstead was at the board meeting, and that he was “generally hostile, accusatory,and insulting.” Bowie, however, denies treating Holstead unfairly.
Other allegations have been made, though, by a number of residents living within the authority who say boardmembers are inaccessible and are making rules that will affect everyone in the watershed without properrepresentation.Denton County resident Kathy Pedroso, who lives just north of Bolivar, noticed her tax bills for thewatershed authority were getting higher over the last few years.
“We went to the [Denton County] tax office to dispute the increase in taxes,” Pedroso said. “They gave us a[phone] number that wasn’t valid. They gave us about three different numbers and none of them worked.”
Pedroso said when she finally did reach Bowie, he wasn’t much help, and now won’t return her phone calls.
“It’s worrisome that the only person who can answer these questions won’t talk to us,” she said.
Bowie said the board published notices about the proposed increased tax rate and held meetings for the publicto comment.
“I don’t recall any conversations with Mr. or Mrs. Pedroso,” Bowie said. “We held a public hearing and not asingle person showed up.”
Taxes to pay for the dams
In 2004, taxpayers in the watershed paid a tax rate of 1 cent per $100 valuation, meaning that a person whoowns a $100,000 home in the watershed paid $10 in taxes. Over the next two years, the taxes were raised to3.5 cents per $100 valuation, and then to 6.5 cents, where it is today, meaning the $100,000 homeowner nowpays $65 a year.
The reason for the tax increases over the past few years, Bowie said, is that the dams in question aredeteriorating and the watershed can’t afford to maintain all 70 dams, let alone fix them.
The tax increases allowed the watershed to hire an engineer to inspect the dams. Also, work has begun on an$800,000 job to fix fences surrounding the dams that keep cattle away, Bowie said. Otherwise, cattle grazingand erosion causes an unstable foundation for the dams, he said.
When Bowie was appointed to the board in December 2003, he began keeping records of meetings andinvestigating the dam infrastructures, which he said were inadequate at best and downright dangerous atworst.
“Over the years, the watershed operated with little more than cosmetic maintenance,” Bowie said.
He found that most dams had gone years without a single inspection and no significant maintenance, but theofficials in the four counties were still allowing people to build homes directly beneath the deteriorating dams.
Some residents, though, have complained the board doesn’t make those arguments to the people actuallyliving in the watershed.
“No one was aware of the Clear Creek Watershed, so people like me have bought land under and aroundthese dams,” said Denton County resident Doug Ragsdale, who owns a four-acre lot near a dam, north ofBolivar. “I won’t be able to resell. I’m basically stuck with it.”
He also said that in conversations between Bowie and Ragsdale’s real estate agent, Bowie spoke in athreatening manner.
“Bowie told my Realtor that if someone were to build on the land, they were going to have to come after us.It was basically nothing short of the Gestapo,” Ragsdale said. “To this day, though, the county still says I can build there.”
Bowie said he talked to Ragsdale’s real estate agent but never threatened anyone. He also said the property inquestion was directly below a dam, which would put anyone living on that property in immediate danger.“Common sense would tell you, you couldn’t build a home right underneath that dam,” he said.
Bowie said people think because county officials don’t stop them from building in a certain area, that meansit’s safe. That’s not true, he said. Officials are usually unaware of the existence of the dam or are relying onoutdated maps, he said. When state officials find that someone has built below one of the dams, they issue thewatershed an order to rebuild or maintain the dam, which is utterly impossible with the watershed’s small taxbase, Bowie said.
That is why the tax rate was raised so dramatically over the past two years, Bowie said.
“Say there is an interstate and someone comes along and builds a house right on the shoulder. Then the statecomes in and says you have to build an overpass over that house to protect it. It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
As of 2007, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service Web site, the total cost forrehabilitation needs for dams in Texas is $200 million, and federal funding for watershed operations hasdwindled from a high of $28 million in 2006 to zero dollars in 2007.
Bednarz said the U.S. Congress is working on some watershed projects, but that Congress is funding only therehabilitation of high-hazard dams.
According to the conservation service, 217 dams in Texas have been classified as “high hazard,” and of those,only five dams have been rehabilitated to date. One dam inside Clear Creek has been classified as high-hazard— a dam just northwest of Sanger. It was classified as high-hazard because one home was built in the areathat is nearly guaranteed to flood if the dam is breached, Bowie said.
“Hazard ratings refer to the potential for loss of life in the event of a dam failure,” Bowie said. “It has nothingto do with the condition of the dam.”
Erik With, district director for U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Flower Mound, said he attended a recent ClearCreek Watershed meeting on behalf of the congressman.
“The congressman likes to send representatives to meetings like these in his district,” With said, adding thatBurgess wants to follow what’s going on with the authority.
Bednarz said that the Clear Creek Watershed has applied for federal funding to help rehabilitate some of itsdams, but that the application is in its beginning stages. Sometime between now and May, he said, the NaturalResources Conservation Service will inspect some of the dam sites and develop a rehabilitation plan. Then theconservation service would have to get that plan approved and request funding, meaning that work would notbegin until 2009.
Meanwhile, the all-volunteer board will work closely with any state or federal agency that chooses toinvestigate the authority’s affairs, Bowie said.
“We have followed every law we know to follow,” Bowie said. “We’ve made every effort to comply and I’mnot aware of any area that we’ve failed.”
MONTY MILLER JR. can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is mwmiller@dentonrc.com.
