Dunlap group closer to repairs for dam
A group of Lake Dunlap property owners — searching for a way to fix a broken dam that drained the lake — has garnered enough support to move forward with the creation of special taxing district, their president said Monday.
The district, along with a property tax to partially pay for an overhaul of the dam, could go to a vote of all lake property owners as soon as November, said J Harmon, president of the Preserve Lake Dunlap Association.
Residents of Lake Dunlap and the five other lakes created by dams owned by the GuadalupeBlanco River Authority have been reeling in the aftermath of the failure of a spill gate on Dunlap in May. The lake is no more, with the water level down 12 to 14 feet, having receded to the natural Guadalupe River channel.
It mirrored what happened to Lake Wood three years earlier.
GBRA officials are worried that spill gate failures on their four other aging dams are imminent. They’ve ceased maintenance and repairs, extended prohibited zones around the dams and warned of a potential loss of life.
Harmon said he’s collected the 50 signatures required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality as the initial step toward the creation of a municipal utility district, or MUD, that would levy an annual property tax if voters approved. The tax would likely be based on the lin
ear feet of each waterfront property in the proposed district. Harmon said he’s hoping to submit the first round of paperwork to the TCEQ by the end of the week.
According to the petition, the district “would be responsible for restoring and maintaining the dam in perpetuity.”
The association will hold several town hall meetings before the election to lay out more details. Harmon has estimated that the tax could be $6 to $8 per linear foot of waterfront.
The proposed district stretches from northwest of Interstate 35 in New Braunfels, along the river to the Dunlap dam. It’s a stretch of 7 to 8 miles of river, equating to 14 to 16 miles of water frontage.
“If your property borders the lake, you’re in the district,” Harmon said, referring to the proposal’s boundaries. “If it doesn’t touch the water, you’re not in the district.”
GBRA officials are moving forward with an engineering analysis to determine exactly what happened at Dunlap, which could lead the authority to lower all the lake levels. Property owners worry that if the GBRA drops water levels, it could be permanent.
All the dams, including the ones on the four existing lakes — McQueeney, Placid, Meadow and Gonzales — were built about 90 years ago. The main problem seems to be antiquated spill gates.
GBRA staff told the TCEQ’s governing board last week that the worst-case-scenario would be a massive failure, particularly at McQueeney, that could be deadly.
Some property owners were skeptical, saying they don’t believe that a massive collapse — all of a dam’s spill gates failing simultaneously — is even remotely likely.
Still, McQueeney and Placid property owners are working alongside those from Dunlap to figure out a plan in conjunction with the GBRA. Though there’s disagreement on what would happen if more spill gates fail, no one challenges that the dams are living on borrowed time and that all need new gates.
Dunlap isn’t waiting, even as some residents have talked about the possibility of a taxing district that would encompass several lakes.
“We’re going to keep it separate because it’s going to be easier for each one of us to create our own district and cover the debt service on $30 million,” Harmon said. “It’s just going to be easier for us to keep it separated.”
The association agrees with the GBRA’s assessment that the existing spill gates — known as “bear trap” gates — should be replaced with hydraulic crest gates, a newer technology that engineers think would be the best fit for all six GBRA dams. But some property owners from the other lakes suggested at the board meeting last week that the less-expensive beartrap gates should be used.
The six dams were privately built in the late 1920s and early ’30s for hydroelectric generation.
The GBRA has estimated that an overhaul of the six dams would cost about $179 million and take years to complete. It would include replacing 15 spill gates, bolstering the concrete dam structures and “hardening” the earthen dam embankments by covering them in concrete.
Jonathan Stinson, GBRA’s deputy general manager, said the river authority cannot spend money on the dams that it earns from other sources. Much of the GBRA’s revenue comes from the sale of water and from wastewater treatment within its 10-county jurisdiction.
The hydroelectric dams have been running in the red for more than a decade, in part because of deregulation of the energy market and the abundance of natural gas, according to GBRA officials.
It’s unclear how much the GBRA could contribute to debt service on bonds sold to rebuild the dams, but officials say the agency will be a financial partner in the deal. Guadalupe County is also expected to participate. Exactly how much each entity would bring to the table is up in the air.
Missing from the discussions so far are the school districts, which receive more of the property tax revenue from the waterfront properties than any other taxing jurisdiction. They also stand to lose the most if property values fall — a very real fear among residents of the lakes.
Harmon and his group are charging forward, working aggressively to meet deadlines for a Nov. 5 election. They are motivated to again have water in their lake.
“It’s an acknowledgment that GBRA can’t do it on its own, and neither can anybody else,” Stinson said. “It’s absolutely going to take entities coming together.”