By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County commissioners court members heard an update on plans for the reconstruction of Cienegas Road recently and learned the roadwork may depend on how flooding issues in the area are addressed.
Commissioners court members heard the update during their Sept. 26 meeting from Richard Zamora, president and chief executive officer of Texas Infrastructure Development Group, the engineering firm the county hired several months ago to design the reconstruction of Cienegas Road.
Zamora introduced Jesse Ramos, one of the company’s principals, to give the court a detailed briefing on the work.
“We just wanted to give you guys an idea of where we were at,” Zamora told the court.
“We started the initial stages of design and conceptual drawings of Cienegas Road. Cienegas Road is going to expand to a three-lane facility, two through lanes with a middle turn lane,” Ramos said.
“The limits of reconstruction are hopefully from Duck Pond Road all the way down to the county line, the city limits. The main topic we’re addressing here is a better facility for the infrastructure and the area, but secondly and most concerning is the drainage that we need to address,” he added.
“We feel like we’re in a good position, moving forward, to continue with the design, and if anybody has any questions, we’d be more than happy to address those,” Ramos finished.
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. said he had been invited by Commissioner Pct. 4 Gustavo “Gus” Flores, in whose precinct the road lies and who has been spearheading the reconstruction efforts, to attend a meeting with the engineers on Sept. 25.
He noted the design firm was planning to present the court with a number of options for flooding mitigation along the roadway.
“It doesn’t do any good, as Commissioner Flores has said, to fix the road unless you fix the flooding issues first,” Owens said.
“So I guess the concern is, starting at the livestock pens the county owns, to get that water moving somewhere other than just sitting there, and then my comment was, it should be pretty simple, but the amount of water that is created is unbelievable, the amount of water that comes out of the industrial park,” Owens added.
Ramos noted the entire facility incorporates a water volume of 300 cubic feet per second.
“That is the amount of water that is generated through there, which is unbelievable. So our plans right now, you all had given us several options, and I think at the end of the day, Commissioner Flores had picked maybe four or five for you to come back to us with, to give us an idea of cost and which way to run. I think one of the main issues right now is going to be the drainage issue,” the county judge said.
“The road’s not that big of a problem; it’s trying to figure out the drainage,” Owens said.
“Right,” Ramos agreed.
Owens said another issue discussed during the meeting was the city’s planned new sewer trunk line.
“So you all were going to look into it. I do know that the trunk line that is there, they’re probably going to start working on it soon, at least the first phase, to get it from the (wastewater treatment) plant off Frontera Lane to around the airport, so that’s something that we’re going to have to look at,” Owens said.
He told Zamora and Ramos the county would work with the city to get its plans for the proposed trunk line and would work with property owners off and around Cienegas Road to possibly acquire some property to bury pipe or place an open channel for expedited drainage to further protect Cienegas Road once it is reconstructed.
“Yesterday’s meeting was very informative, and it just seems like there’s still a lot of work to be done, especially on the drainage,” Owens said.
The county judge then asked Flores to add his comments.
“Judge, as I’ve stated in the past, this is a very important project for the county, especially for the industrial park. This road, Cienegas Road, is the backbone of the industrial park and hopefully in the future, the near future, it will tie in to the second (international) bridge, so it’s going to be a big asset to the county that we fix this road,” Flores said.
The court took no action following the presentation.
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