Brownwood Flooding: What's being written !

Sunday February 12, 2006
Op Ed: Letters To The Editor Brownwood Bulletin Where will the flood runoff go ?

To the editor:

The Brownwood Bulletin said that the City of Brownwood is allowing Gary Davis to build the Market Place Apartments in a flood zone over by Home Depot. To do that he will bring in 20,000 yards of fill dirt. The city is paying $89,000 of the $130,250 cost for that fill as an incentive to promote the project.
That is quite interesting considering that I have been told that I — or anyone around the lake for that matter — cannnot move a speck of dirt in a flood plain, either in or out, without permission from the “Queen of Flood Plain Permits and Septic Systems” at the courthouse, and if you do, you get fined hundreds of dollars. So how does the City of Brownwood get around this ?
Where is all the water going that is displaced because of 20,000 yards of fill? The water was just one parking lot away from the courthouse in the last three 500-year floods we’ve had in the last 15 years. Will that displacement push the water into the courthouse or downtown next time?

Tommy Davis
Lake Brownwood