$4.6 million for water infrastructure funding in Presidio County
The Texas Water Development Board approved $4.6 million in water infrastructure funding from its Economically Distressed Areas Program (EDAP) for Presidio County last week. The EDAP program provides funding for first-time residential water and wastewater service and for projects to address water quality violations and so-called “public nuisances” that can pose water-related threats to public health. The county successfully secured public nuisance determinations for all the projects, meaning that 70% of the funding will be a grant and 30% will be a loan.
The funding includes design and construction funds for sewer line replacement at Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa, design and planning funds for new water systems in Shafter and Colonia Las Pampas, and design and construction funds for new water and wastewater lines in East Heights and other underserved areas of Marfa. Notably absent from the package is funding for the construction of the new systems in Shafter and Las Pampas. Despite the county’s emergency declaration for Shafter and the decades-long wait for a water system in Las Pampas, the TWDB will require the county to submit a new application to fund the construction of those systems.
Presidio County had a top team of advisors to complete the application, including Bill Moriarty (application engineer), Maria Urbina (financial advisor), Paul Braden (bond counsel), Ramon Carrasco (engineer), Rogelio Rodriguez (with Water Finance Exchange), and Vanessa Puig-Williams (with Environmental Defense Fund). As a rural, underserved, low-income, remote, majority-Hispanic border county, the county also meets just about every criterion applicable to an “economically distressed area.” The communities of the county additionally took the unprecedented step of forming the Presidio County Water Infrastructure Steering Committee to create a much-vaunted regional approach that could serve as a model for the rest of the state. So why, despite all of these efforts, were we unsuccessful in getting these projects fully funded for some of our most vulnerable residents?
For one thing, the original cost estimates we submitted (to the tune of $12.6 million) were wildly inflated. The thinking, on the advice of our consultants, was to set a high bar and work down from there, rather than setting a low bar with little room to negotiate. This accounts for some of the reduction in funding. But the main reason for the reduction is the TWDB’s refusal to fund the construction of two independent water systems in Shafter and Las Pampas.
One of my takeaways from this experience is how seemingly biased the process is toward cities. And it’s not just because cities have more technical expertise than rural areas. It’s structural. There were many application forms I had to annotate with explanations because the questions were geared toward cities. The TWDB staff also kept harping on the many “unknowns” involved in our non-municipal projects, barely able to mask their disbelief at our troublesome circumstances. While I don’t doubt the good faith of our partners at TWDB, the most plausible explanation for their incomprehension could be the agency’s tacit preference for working with municipal systems. The untidy reality of rural life is difficult to insert into a process designed to accommodate cities. Even the loan structure is based on the funding sources of cities, who can pay back an EDAP loan with property tax, water revenues, gas revenues, etc. Meanwhile, counties fund this sort of debt through certificates of obligation that are always paid from a single source: property tax. But because the state requires applicants to pledge two revenue streams to cover a TWDB loan, it took months of back and forth before the state finally accepted the jail fund as sufficient to check its bureaucratic box.
If the objective is to ensure that more infrastructure funding goes to the underserved, then it would be helpful to reform and streamline the process to logically accommodate entities other than cities and utilities. TWDB might also train its staff in creative solutions and customer service so they can learn to listen and respond to us like the valuable clients we are. It may also be time to reframe the need for more technical assistance. Onerous, byzantine processes will always require exclusionary skills to navigate them. A more equitable, supportive approach to infrastructure funding could make such skills largely unnecessary.
Trey Gerfers is a San Antonio native and serves as general manager of the Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District. He is also chairman of the Presidio County Water Infrastructure Steering Committee and president of the Marfa Parks and Recreation Board. Trey has lived in Marfa since 2013. He can be reached at tgerfers@pcuwcd.org.