Tamm Lane residents push for change

HARLINGEN - Tamm Lane residents have persuaded Cameron County officials to consider changes to drainage systems in their area due to severe flooding from Hurricane Dolly.

Residents blamed county changes in their ditches during the 2007 repaving of Tamm Lane for massive flooding of their homes and farmland during the past two weeks.

During a heated closed-door Wednesday meeting at Precinct 4 Commissioner Edna Tamayo's office, county officials agreed to tour the area with residents and afterward agreed to design changes that will reduce future flooding.

Tamm Lane resident Eileen Fox said drainage in some ditches in the area, which naturally would flow to the northeast, was reversed by the county to flow south, which caused flooding at her family's homes, neighbors' property and surrounding farm fields.

County engineers are not familiar with drainage in the area, but her family has lived on Tamm Lane since the 1930s, she said. They could have given engineers valuable advice before any changes were made, Fox said.

"All we want is for them to put things back the way they were before Tamm Lane was repaved so that the water drains off like it used to," she said.

Arnold Fox said he knows how water drains, or should drain, in the flat, low-lying farmland just north of Expressway 83 west of Harlingen.

"I've been out here 44 years," Arnold Fox said. "I've been through three hurricanes out here and one back in 1933 in San Benito when I was 5 years old ... we had the big one down there ... It was mean, I know."

Tamm Lane residents toured the area with county commissioners and told about flooding problems they said endangered the health of people and livestock in the area after Hurricane Dolly.

The property owners said changes made during the paving of Tamm Lane blocked drainage systems that had worked well in the past.

"When they paved this road (Tamm Lane near the intersection with Wyrick Road), they cut off this ditch going north here, which drains a lot of our water," Arnold Fox said. "That's one of the big problems. And then it needs two ditches down Wyrick Road all the way to the drainage ditch to pull this water out of here.

"Some of our water drains north and some drains south."

Tamayo and Assistant County Administrator David Garcia, as well as Alejandro Sanchez and Roland Lozano of the Cameron County Engineering Department, promised to study the problems and make changes.

But Garcia said the situation has changed and just putting drainage back the way it was before the Tamm Lane paving project won't fix all the problems.

"We have to weigh the impact of the situation," Garcia said. "Before, that subdivision wasn't over there," he said, pointing to a new subdivision on Rodeo Road, north of the Fox homestead on Tamm Lane. "So it wasn't an issue."

More culverts may have to be installed to ensure water flows under all driveways that connect to county roads and drainage isn't blocked during a major storm, he said.

Some properties in the area do not have drainage ditches along roads in front of their properties, members of the Fox family said. Some of their neighbors have said they don't intend to give property easements to the county so additional ditches can be dug, they said.

Engineers said they will likely have to discuss the need for more ditches with the county's legal staff before devising a plan to cure the drainage woes.