ustxtxb_obs_1973_06_29_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

and talk and talk or do the city, county, and the state and the nation get together to do something about it? If it is that important they ought to do something about it. . . . Nobody seems to care. .. . “I sit here and listen to this and wonder where we are going and what we are going to do and how long does it take us to wake up to the realities and the practicalities of the situation and do something to protect our children and our grandchildren. After all, if we don’t do it for them, it isn’t going to be done.” When Turk was on the stand, the judge interrupted Again to ask if the tremendous aquifer was worth the expense of protecting it. “How are we going to do it?” he asked. “Ideally, all that [aquifer] area should be fenced off, trees, parks, bridle paths not for horses, maybe.” If development continues, “there’s going to be more and more pollution because that’s the way things have been going. At what point in time are we going to find where the whole area will be polluted?”* In his closing argument. Hardberger said the ranch new town would violate the “ten commandments” in the new communities act of 1970, failing to help the central city; hurting the city’s economic strength; polluting and degrading the water supply; failing to help the poor’ because it is “on the opposite end of town”; unbalancing urban growth; increasing dependence on automobiles. As for the charges that nothing has been done, Hardberger replied to Spears, “. . the truth is, I think, the practical answer, we have got to start somewhere. ” Spears ruled that HUD’s decision to back the new town was “entitled to the presumption of regularity” and found that it was not unreasonable or erroneous and was in full compliance with the applicable laws; said “the exacting restrictions” placed on the developer were the only meaningful attempt so far to control land alternative is that it would get sold to someone who would develop it in a far different way, I suspect,” he said. With housing, job training and an open and pleasant environment, he said, the ranch new town would provide the poor “an upward latticework of mobility.” He laid additional stress on the developers as equal opportunity employers and their commitment of $150,000 to establish a minority-enterprise business investment corporation that could provide $2.25 million in federally-backed loans for businesses 51 percent or more owned by members of minorities. Each elementary school would have to have “the full economic mix,” so that kids from $50,000 homes and $6,000 homes would study together, even though their residential sections would be grouped according to economic standing because of marketing practicalities \(e.g., you can’t sell a $50,000 Honts made these points with a skill that accounts for his role in his group, but Judge Spears had all the variables before him, the complex and vexing arguments, the shape of the city, the dangerous mysteries of the aquifer. His responses were interesting judicially and personally. In comments during the trial he lashed out at the vulnerability of the aquifer and the negligence of public agencies about its protection. Far from reassuring the plaintiffs’ lawyers, these comments seemed to be bracing them for a decision against them. SPEARS INTERRUPTED city planner Davis’ testimony to ask why, with all the information available for many decades, “nobody has ever taken the trouble to see to it that this recharge zone is not touched or encroached upon? [E] verybody waits until it is here and then wants to do something about it.” Why didn’t “these people with all of this knowledge” say something when they saw that UT at San Antonio was going to be built on the recharge zone? What were they going to do now, tell the property owners, ” ‘Freeze, boys, you can’t use your property’ “? The judge seemed to give, at this stage, two answers. “It just doesn’t make sense.. . . [It] is just too little too late. . [T] he entire area is going to be developed; so the thing that it seems to me is that as far as the people are concerned they have to do the best they can with, the property that is being developed,” he said. But he also said, “Are we just going to sit back and wait and wait and wait until it is developed and then it is too late to do anything or the property .then becomes so valuable? The Legislature has appareiLly done nothing. . . . What’s the county going to do about it? Nobody offers anything. . . . “The city of San Antonio has washed its hands of it. . . . Do we just talk and talk use over the recharge zone and were “a giant step in the right direction”; denied the plaintiffs “all relief”; said that since the future of the whole aquifer “could be at stake,” he retained jurisdiction and ordered all concerned Texas and local agencies and the developer to keep him fully advised and give him reports every six months; and credited the plaintiffs with performing “a very important service” by alerting the public to the dangers of pollution of the aquifer, in consideration of which he in effect invited the plaintiffs to make an argument that some of their lawyers should be paid their fees by some of the defendants. In the aftermath of this decision, Spears rejected HUD’s motion he reverse himself on his retention of jurisdiction. Hugh Yantis said the Texas Water Quality Board has “no intention of failing in our protection of the aquifer.” George Christian said, “For God’s sake we’re not going to try to pollute the aquifer HUD would shut us down, or this judge would. He is an environmentalist. . . . The court heard all the evidence. The court said we got the best there is. There are no controls over UTSA, no controls over anybody except us. We’re the only ones there are any effective controls over.” An appeal by some of the plaintiffs became a certainty, Hardberger says, upon the unanimous decision of the Edwards Underground Water District to appeal. *In May, 1972, Congressman Gonzalez proposed that a consortium of San Antonio area public water agencies study the buying up of parts of the land over the aquifer to protect it from pollution. In the long run, he said, this would be cheaper than developing surface-water resources soon. “It is feasible,” he said. Yantis, the TWQB executive director, said at this time that such protective moves for drinking water sources “are becoming traditional” in most states, but predicted that advanced waste treatment was due for San Antonio “in a few years.” \(San Antonio Express, THE PROMOTERS’ trouble with the Legislature in Austin began when Red McCombs got Sen. Glenn Kothmann to introduce their bill on a last-minute hurry-up basis. McCombs gave the senator a hard sell, calling the new town in town the biggest thing for the city since HemisFair and assuring him that the two bills they wanted were not controversial. So, anyway, Kothmann told a delegation from San Antonio. Kothmann introduced the bills without reading them. Then, from Washington, Gonzalez laced into him about their content. Kothmann is a politician who does not like to say much in public, and he . dislikes being controversial. His skittishness was the promoters’ basic weakness on the legislative chessboard. The Legislature Business sources in San Antonio opposed to the new town sounded an alarm behind the scenes about one provision of the legislation, particularly. In Section 9, H.B. 1471 by Bob Vale authorized cities to “contribute to any agency funds” derived from any source authorized by the bill to carry out a new town program. The sources authorized included “project loans obtainable from any source, public or private,” including federal grants, revenue sharing funds, bond revenues, certificates of indebtedness, revenues from the new town, mortgages of project land or “the general funds of the city.” This, the business sources said, authorized any future city council to ladle the city’s money into the new town June 29, 1973 9