The Gazette-Enterprise

GERONIMO — Guadalupe County launched a $330,000 study it hopes will enable it to better protect the Geronimo and Alligator Creek watersheds from flood damage.

The county partnered with Comal County and the cities of Seguin and New Braunfels to apply for a $165,000 grant through the Texas Water Development Board to study the watershed and identify potential flood mitigation projects along the watershed, which runs from north of New Braunfels through Guadalupe County to Geronimo and on east of Seguin to the Guadalupe River. The local agencies must match the grant, most of which will be provided through in-kind services connected to the study.

Wednesday night’s public meeting at the Navarro Elementary School cafeteria attracted about 50 participants and is the first of four public gatherings at which officials participating in the study hope to learn what local residents perceive as problems.

Guadalupe County Road & Bridge Superintendent Larry Timmermann said county officials hope the study would be completed by late next summer with the help of residents of the area who are familiar with flooding in the area.

“We want to do a good job of controlling flooding in this area and we want to make a real impact with this program,” Timmermann said. “We’ll take this information back, highlight those areas where there are problems and try to have solutions as a result of this study.”

Timmermann said he hoped the process would identify potential projects to mitigate or reduce flooding. Such projects could include deepening or re-shaping channels or building retention or detention ponds.

“Our goal is to build something,” Timmermann said. “But to do that, you need to have this study in hand. You have to go through this process.”

Short of construction, increased regulations or floodplain development policies could also be considered to restrict or control floodplain development to reduce flooding losses. As part of the study floodplain maps that haven’t been updated since the 1970s are expected to be revisited — and likely re-drawn.

The study is being conducted at the same time as Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority and Texas AgriLife Extension are conducting an $800,000, three-year water quality study, and the studies are expected to dovetail in several areas.

GBRA Director of Water Quality Services Debbie Magin and Ward Ling of Agrilife Extension described the water quality study and its goals in a brief presentation.

“Water quality in the Alligator and Geronimo creeks is right at the cutoff for contact recreation,” Magin told the residents. “This is a great opportunity for us to start the water quality planning process.”

Ling said the study would seek to reduce harmful bacteria and nitrogen in the watershed.

“The goal of the study is to develop a plan for reducing nitrogen and E. coli and put it into action,” Ling said.

Lance Klein with M&S Engineering, the study consultant, asked residents to place orange dots on a map of the watershed to show their location — and the location of known flooding problem areas.

“You’ll need a lot of dots,” one attendee told Klein to laughter around the room.

Klein said officials hoped the study would identify up to five potential flood mitigation projects.

The first thing planners would have to do, he said, was update previous studies and the existing flood maps of the area, which he said the Federal Emergency Management Agency hadn’t updated in its study of Guadalupe and Comal counties completed in 2005. The study would also update land uses to current uses and conditions and project what a complete buildout of the watershed might look like.

“We’re going to try to project uses and see what the floodplain will look like,” Klein said. “It’s not going to be a worst-case scenario — it’s a real-life scenario.”

When the study is completed next summer, Klein said the county would begin looking for funds to build whatever projects suggested themselves.

“We’re going to jump right on it. We’ll go through the process of putting applications together for specific projects,” Klein said. “The Texas Water Development Board does a good job of turning these around. Some of these projects may take a while, but it’s a quick process. We’re not talking 20 years or anything.”

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