Town can’t seem to get its share of progress
Tamina lies at the end of the road, a two-lane byway with the same name as this old, almost forgotten place. A faded sign announces the community, founded in 1871, while bleached-out buildings and a shuttered fireworks stand suggest a livelier time.
The still-life image could be of any last-gasp town in rural Texas, except it’s about a mile from The Woodlands, the booming Montgomery County enclave with ritzy neighborhoods and glass towers.
While their affluent neighbors fret over the rapid pace of development, the few hundred people remaining in Tamina are desperately trying to maintain its pulse. The historically black community can’t have new houses or stores or a future, some residents say, without addressing basic needs, namely sewer service.
Tamina leaders have lined up federal funding to construct a public sewer line within the unincorporated community. But they need a nearby city or utility to agree to treat the sewage on a wholesale basis, and none appears willing to do it. More recently, the nearby city of Shenandoah backed out of a deal because the terms of the federal funding could prevent the growing town from annexing Tamina in the future.
It’s the second time in a decade that Tamina’s neighbors have said no. And so the community is headed to court to force a connection.
“It’s a crying shame that we cannot get help while sitting in the middle of all this prosperity,” said James Leveston, a lifelong Tamina resident who’s in charge of the community’s water supply. “We’ve had to fight for everything we have. I don’t understand it.”
The standoff reflects the challenge of keeping the most endangered of communities — black and formerly rural — from disappearing during Greater Houston’s latest growth spurt. An hour away, Katy’s Danover Street is giving way to commercial development, a decline that began three decades ago when the city changed its zoning to attract more business.
Pocket of poverty
Tamina was born after the Civil War, in the time of the Houston and Great Northern Railroad’s push from Houston to the Red River and beyond. Freed slaves settled the densely wooded area, some 30 miles north of Houston, and the community grew to include a post office, train station, elementary school and stores.
But Tamina lost the post office in the late 1930s and the school a decade later. The depot disappeared, too. They weren’t replaced, but the place somehow managed to hang on.
These days, Tamina is a mishmash of tumbledown houses, mobile homes and front-yard trailers. Heavy trucks rumble down side streets with no shoulders or sidewalks, past old churches and child care centers that open before daybreak, on their way to industrial sites north and east of the community.
Many of those who live here are third-, fourth- and fifth-generation residents. The per-capita income is about $17,000, according to a recent survey by the Old Tamina Water Supply Corp., which included the data in an application for federal funding.
The community’s aging infrastructure is incapable of providing enough water for commercial use and fire suppression. Without a public sewer, its nearly 200 homes rely on septic tanks, some decades old.
Shirley Grimes, who moved to Tamina in 1971 with her parents and raised six children in the community, said people stay because it’s a place where neighbors look out for each other. Younger residents cut lawns for the elderly and sick, while clothes, shoes and pots of slow-cooked pinto beans find their way to those in need.
“People don’t have a whole lot,” she said, “but they have each other.”
But some families are thinking about leaving, said Grimes, director of the nonprofit Tamina Community Center, which provides child care, a food pantry and computer labs. “They’re getting really discouraged by seeing all the development around Tamina, and nothing is happening here.”
Running out of room
It’s impossible to miss the changes happening in nearby Shenandoah. Just 40 years old, the city has a gleaming hospital, big-box stores, restaurants and the Conroe Independent School District’s 10,000seat football stadium, which cost $49 million to build in 2008.
Shenandoah leaders want to do more — to expand the city’s economic base by building more houses, apartments, office parks and retail centers at a time when The Woodlands’ glow is attracting more jobs to the area.
But Shenandoah is limited by its size — two square miles that straddle Interstate 45. And Texas law prevents the city from annexing adjacent land for development until its population reaches 5,000 residents. Some forecasts suggest the city will hit the target by 2030.
Should Shenandoah be able to annex land, its long-range development plan calls for expanding east of the freeway into an unincorporated area that includes Tamina. City leaders envision research laboratories, assembly and manufacturing facilities and warehouses sprouting just north of the sagging community.
Separately, regional transportation planners have proposed turning Tamina Road into a major thoroughfare. The project, which isn’t identified as an immediate need, would extend the roadway east through Tamina to FM 1314 and open vast acreage for development.
With growth in mind, Shenandoah told Tamina that it couldn’t provide wastewater service. That’s because the community’s loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture prohibits the city from annexing property connected to the new sewer until the debt is repaid, Shenandoah City Attorney William Ferebee said.
“I don’t know if there is a city in this state or the country that would agree to that,” he said, adding that the Shenandoah City Council didn’t want to “tie up future City Councils for another generation.”
Tamina, meanwhile, asserts that Shenandoah wrongly refused to serve the community and put $2.2 million in federal funding in jeopardy. A jury trial in Montgomery County’s 284th District Court is scheduled for next July.
“They had a provider by contract but that provider breached the contract,” said Ramond Howard, a Missouri City attorney representing Tamina. “Shenandoah has had astonishing growth, and they don’t want it stalled in any way.” Not going away
The two worlds collide on Tamina Road, at the dirt driveway of Ola Mae Leveston, 78, whose oneacre property bordering Shenandoah suddenly has been surrounded by new development.
The view from her front window is of a four-story Courtyard by Marriott, which opened late last year. The framework of a second new hotel looms over her backyard. At night, she can hear the marching bands and fullthroated fans at the nearby stadium.
Despite offers, Leveston won’t sell. She was born and raised in Tamina, married a neighbor and had seven children. Five of them still reside in the community. Her brotherin-law, James, is president of the Old Tamina Water Supply Corp.
She has lived on the property for nearly a halfcentury. The house is only a few years old, though. After her husband died, their children and some neighbors came together to build her a new place with an $8,000 aerobic septic system.
“I don’t want to sell it,” she said. “Where would I go?”
James Leveston, 72, said he realizes growth cannot be resisted forever. But he wants Tamina to be part of the progress, not wiped away by it.
“I don’t know what the future is going to be,” he said while standing where Tamina Road runs out of blacktop and into weeds. “I don’t know if Tamina has a future. But you have people fighting to hang on to this community, and that’s all you can do.”