El Campo gets chance to speak out on TTC plan
HEARING SET: The El Campo hearing on the Trans-Texas Corridor will be held at the El Campo Civic Center Thursday. The Open House is 5 to 6:30 p.m. with the public hearing to follow.
By BRENDA SOMMER bsommer@leader-news.com

Area residents will have the opportunity to express their opinions regarding the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor draft environmental impact statement during a public hearing tomorrow night at the El Campo Civic Center.

The hearing agenda includes a presentation by the Texas Department of Transportation on the preliminary draft environmental statement, and then the floor will be opened up for public comment. Federal rules and regulations prohibit TxDOT representatives from responding to the comments, but those comments will be recorded by a court reporter and made part of

the project's permanent

per-

record.

A similar hearing already took place in Wharton Feb. 11. TxDOT engineers at that meeting said right now they are looking at a planning area and have a lot of work to do before they come up with any exact route. They emphasized that no specific route has been selected or will be selected until funding exists for construction.

Susan and Delbur Swanson, who have roughly 800 acres in the FM 1300 area in the proposed TTC path, feel it's crucial for people to attend tomorrow night's meeting.

"The people need to come and let the (transportation) commissioners in Austin know what their views are," Delbur Swanson said.

"It's so important that people come Thursday night," Susan Swanson said. "This will split the county in two, and for people who think it's not coming, it's coming. It may not be built for 50 years, but they're going to purchase the land in 10 years."

She said the areas in TxDOT's map "aren't set in stone."

"Look at the map and make sure your homes aren't in it," she said. "It could shift right or left at any moment."

Opposition groups have railed against Gov. Rick Perry's TTC plan for years, saying it was slipped into another bill at the last minute in 2003 and will eat up thousands of acres of privately held land.

The plan lets the Madrid, Spainbased company Cintra develop the first stretch of the TTC, which will roughly parallel Interstate 35 through the state's heart, the first part of a proposed 4,000- mile-long network of roads, rail, pipelines and communications infrastructure costing roughly $183 billion.

Funding for the 50-year plan would come largely from tolls and concessions. The roadway would contain up to six lanes for small vehicle traffic, four more lanes for 18-wheelers, half a dozen rail lines for goods and passenger traffic and a utility zone for pipelines and wire connections.

The road's developers would have total control over which businesses and concessions are able to locate along the road, and the state's transportation department would be barred from constructing or widening highways that might "compete" with the toll roads.

TxDOT has said the draft environmental impact statement preferred route is still very preliminary, and is not the final route of the project, but rather is the preferred route from an environmental standpoint.

As currently defined, the preferred corridor begins north of Lake Texana and extends northeast, parallel to U.S. 59 and passes west of El Campo and Wharton, then turns north towards I-10 passing west of Wallis then east of Sealy and San Felipe. Once north of I-20, the corridor turns to pass east of Pine Island and Prairie View and west of Wallis, crossing U.S. 290, and ending near the Waller Grimes County Line.

The El Campo open house is scheduled from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21 with the public hearing starting at 6:30 p.m.

Additional meetings will be held at Riverside Hall in East Bernard on Feb. 25 and at Sealy High School on Feb. 26.

More information on the meetings or meeting locations can be found on the Internet at www.keeptexasmoving.com.