By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A company creating an updated Laughlin Air Force Base compatible land use study held an open house meeting Thursday to hear input from the public.
The open house meeting was held in the conference room at the Val Verde County Library. Elected officials, county and city administrators and staff and members of the public attended the open house, which was hosted by the Matrix Design Group, a San Antonio engineering and design company writing the study.
Those attending the open house were asked to sign in and review a series of informational boards set up explaining and depicting various aspects of the Laughlin AFB compatible use study.
According to the information provided, “The Laughlin AFB compatible use study (CUS) is a collaborative planning effort sponsored by Val Verde County with participation from the city of Del Rio, state and federal agencies and Laughlin AFB. The study will address 25 compatibility factors relating to development, resiliency, resources and social topics that may impact Laughlin AFB and the surrounding community.”
Citizens unable to attend the meeting may view the same resources presented on the project’s official web site at www.laughlincus.com
The web site features an interactive map that allows citizens and officials to identify a variety of issues by placing icons on a map of the area. A similar map was offered at the open house, allowing those attending to mark sites of concern.
Mike Hrapla, senior vice president of Matrix Design, spoke to the 830 Times about the compatible use study and its importance to the Laughlin, Del Rio and Val Verde County communities.
“This is a follow-on project that we initially did about 12 years ago, in 2008. It was called a joint land use study at that time, and the focus of the joint land use study, now the compatible use study, is to work with communities and the military to ensure there’s compatible operations and development around the military installation,” Hrapla explained.
“From the military perspective, the goal is to minimize impacts to the mission and to the mission accomplishment. From the community’s perspective, it’s to help guide them in their development and to protect life, safety, health. You talk about the flight zones and accident potential, you’re talking about life and safety, and when you talk about the noise contours, that’s also dealing with sensitive operations or facilities like hospitals, assisted living facilities, schools. You don’t want to put those in the noise areas.
“So it helps guide development as the city grows, to ensure it’s smart development, so you have that information so elected officials can make informed decisions, at the same time you’re making sure you don’t so things that would impact one of your major employers and main economic engines, which is the base,” Hrapla said.
“So that’s the goal. Now it’s a number of years later (from the completion of the first study), and we look at what’s been positively adopted and put in place by the county and the city, and we’re re-assessing those areas and looking at the new challenges and concerns that have come up and how we can provide recommendations to address those for the current administrations and the current leadership of the base and more importantly, their successors.
“We want to create a playbook and it’s a set of recommendations for those individuals today, and it will be a living document for the future to go down those paths for the next five to 10 years,” Hrapla added.
—
Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
