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Lake McQueeny

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TX AG 88
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3:23p, 8/27/19
AG
I lived on Lake Placid from 2005-2009. I loved that place, and my back yard. Two or three lots on either side of me were weekend owners, so it was like my own private nature/water preserve. I mourned from the time we moved back into town until the day I heard about these dams and the lack of funds to repair them. Now I'm finally glad I got out while the getting was good. I had no idea the electricity from the dams didn't cover their upkeep. I feel for the buyers of my old house and my old neighbors, but I can't see why anyone else (non-lakefront owners) should be responsible for repairing the dams so the lakefront owners can enjoy their lake again. Really a raw deal for them!

If the hydro power hasn't been profitable for years or decades, the GBRA really is guilty of malfeasance for not at least attempting to come up with some other revenue model. They couldn't have thought those dams would magically last forever, could they?!!!
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lespaul
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11:50a, 8/28/19
AG
What a mess this is. Not only will good folks lose their lake/lifestyle, the tax implications seem huge. People were paying high taxes for lakefront. Now that this will be riverfront, how do the property value and taxes get set?

It would seem that the taxes should go way down (unfortunately because the property values decrease). How much, 1%, 10%, 50%? I have no idea (any realtors here who have sold houses on Dunlap?). This could be a large loss in tax revenue. How will the local gov't handle such a sudden loss in tax revenue?



2019 market values for properties:
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TXAGFAN
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In reply to lespaul • 1:18p, 8/28/19
AG
lespaul said:
What a mess this is. Not only will good folks lose their lake/lifestyle, the tax implications seem huge. People were paying high taxes for lakefront. Now that this will be riverfront, how do the property value and taxes get set?

It would seem that the taxes should go way down (unfortunately because the property values decrease). How much, 1%, 10%, 50%? I have no idea (any realtors here who have sold houses on Dunlap?). This could be a large loss in tax revenue. How will the local gov't handle such a sudden loss in tax revenue?



2019 market values for properties:
Loss in property tax value and resulting revenue won't pay for maintenance of dams. I'd guess that gap is massive and to be fair, incremental to any current services they are providing with existing tax base.
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Sgt. Hartman
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In reply to Stat Monitor Repairman • 2:03p, 8/28/19
AG
Dunlap used to be exactly as you describe thanks to the public boat ramp under the IH 35 bridge. I think that ramp had better be closed if property owners are required to fund the rebuild. I mean if the owners rebuild the dam, the lake belongs to them and is no longer public, right?
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lespaul
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In reply to Sgt. Hartman • 2:24p, 8/28/19
AG

Sgt: Hartman: Good question. It would seem if Dunlap residents pay for the dam repair, that the lake would be private (i.e no public ramp). Just my initial thought, probably more complicated than this.
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Burdizzo
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In reply to Sgt. Hartman • 2:25p, 8/28/19
AG
Sgt. Hartman said:
Dunlap used to be exactly as you describe thanks to the public boat ramp under the IH 35 bridge. I think that ramp had better be closed if property owners are required to fund the rebuild. I mean if the owners rebuild the dam, the lake belongs to them and is no longer public, right?


Who owns the water in the lake?
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LCE
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2:34p, 8/28/19
AG
I have a dumb question. If Dam is removed, what right do the landowners have to dam the river?
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Sgt. Hartman
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In reply to Burdizzo • 2:43p, 8/28/19
AG
You do. And you are welcome to launch your inner tube, kayak and canoe from the IH 35 bridge just as you can from Loop 337, River Road, or any other public access point upstream. Your going to have to portage at the new dam to get to FM 78 to take out though.

But if you launch your jet ski or ski boat, you are using a lake that was impounded by private funds. You cannot have it both ways and say Dunlap is a local problem and then proceed up from San Antonio or down from Austin and launch your boat into it.
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Baseball-Junkie
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2:43p, 8/28/19
Well, the Lodge won't be much without the Lake. I know Buzz had a lot of clout, but I hope the vigor Kipp has shown, can help out with this a bit, too.
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Ol_Ag_02
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3:08p, 8/28/19
AG
Lake and river people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their lake / river".
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Baseball-Junkie
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In reply to Ol_Ag_02 • 3:11p, 8/28/19
Ol_Ag_02 said:
Lake and river people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their lake / river".

It's human nature. It's no different than the people who aren't invested in those resources, wanting to take advantage of them.
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aggiejumper
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In reply to Ol_Ag_02 • 3:18p, 8/28/19
AG
(Insert any class of person/group) people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their (insert the class location they are vested in)".

I'll start:

Gated Neighborhoods
Country Clubs
Private Golf Courses

It's not a "lake/river" thing, it's a human nature thing...
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Ragoo
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In reply to Sgt. Hartman • 3:22p, 8/28/19
AG
Sgt. Hartman said:
You do. And you are welcome to launch your inner tube, kayak and canoe from the IH 35 bridge just as you can from Loop 337, River Road, or any other public access point upstream. Your going to have to portage at the new dam to get to FM 78 to take out though.

But if you launch your jet ski or ski boat, you are using a lake that was impounded by private funds. You cannot have it both ways and say Dunlap is a local problem and then proceed up from San Antonio or down from Austin and launch your boat into it.
there are private ramps on Dunlap that sell memberships to launch. Remember the ramp under IH-35 was closed for 5+ years while the interstate was under construction.
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Stat Monitor Repairman
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In reply to Sgt. Hartman • 3:24p, 8/28/19
Sgt. Hartman said:
Dunlap used to be exactly as you describe thanks to the public boat ramp under the IH 35 bridge. I think that ramp had better be closed if property owners are required to fund the rebuild. I mean if the owners rebuild the dam, the lake belongs to them and is no longer public, right?
Right.

Operation and maintenance of the dam, fisheries, weed control, boat ramps, and all other costs associated with the lake would be for the adjoining property owners account. Yeah, a private lake essentially.
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Ol_Ag_02
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In reply to aggiejumper • 4:00p, 8/28/19
AG
aggiejumper said:
(Insert any class of person/group) people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their (insert the class location they are vested in)".

I'll start:

Gated Neighborhoods
Country Clubs
Private Golf Courses

It's not a "lake/river" thing, it's a human nature thing...


Try again. Those are private property. The lakes, navigable rivers, and wildlife of Texas belong to the people.
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schmellba99
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In reply to Ol_Ag_02 • 4:29p, 8/28/19
AG
Ol_Ag_02 said:
aggiejumper said:
(Insert any class of person/group) people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their (insert the class location they are vested in)".

I'll start:

Gated Neighborhoods
Country Clubs
Private Golf Courses

It's not a "lake/river" thing, it's a human nature thing...


Try again. Those are private property. The lakes, navigable rivers, and wildlife of Texas belong to the people.
And the water to the river will still be accessible by the public ramp at I-35. Or the one on McQueeny at 78 or whatever that road is.

The water itself may be public domain, but the land surrounding it is not. As evidenced by one of the quotes above - people were selling access rights to Dunlap. They can't charge to be on the lake, but they can charge access via their private property to get to the lake.

Not much different than the Narrows access - the riverbed is public, the land around them is not and there is no duty by the landowners to grant access. Devil's River is another example of this.

The lakes were created to generate hydroelectric power. There is nothing that states that the lakes have to be there beyond those purposes, and hurting property values is a hard sell to me to force GBRA to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on dams that have no legitimate purpose anymore. Just my opinion.
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normaleagle05
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In reply to Stat Monitor Repairman • 4:38p, 8/28/19
AG
Stat Monitor Repairman said:
Sgt. Hartman said:
Dunlap used to be exactly as you describe thanks to the public boat ramp under the IH 35 bridge. I think that ramp had better be closed if property owners are required to fund the rebuild. I mean if the owners rebuild the dam, the lake belongs to them and is no longer public, right?
Right.

Operation and maintenance of the dam, fisheries, weed control, boat ramps, and all other costs associated with the lake would be for the adjoining property owners account. Yeah, a private lake essentially.

The Texas Supreme Court case striking down this line of thought was already tried. Private dam. Public lake.

ETA: My mistake...Court of Civil Appeals.
https://casetext.com/case/diversion-lake-club-v-heath-1
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Baseball-Junkie
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In reply to normaleagle05 • 4:41p, 8/28/19
normaleagle05 said:
Stat Monitor Repairman said:
Sgt. Hartman said:
Dunlap used to be exactly as you describe thanks to the public boat ramp under the IH 35 bridge. I think that ramp had better be closed if property owners are required to fund the rebuild. I mean if the owners rebuild the dam, the lake belongs to them and is no longer public, right?
Right.

Operation and maintenance of the dam, fisheries, weed control, boat ramps, and all other costs associated with the lake would be for the adjoining property owners account. Yeah, a private lake essentially.

The Texas Supreme Court case striking down this line of thought was already tried. Private dam. Public lake.

If it's a public lake, there should be public money for the dam.
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normaleagle05
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In reply to Baseball-Junkie • 4:44p, 8/28/19
AG
Agreed. And high quality, ubiquitously sited, public access to that lake.

But the (private) dam makes the lake. The lake doesn't make the dam.
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Kenneth_2003
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In reply to schmellba99 • 5:52p, 8/28/19
AG
schmellba99 said:
Ol_Ag_02 said:
aggiejumper said:
(Insert any class of person/group) people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their (insert the class location they are vested in)".

I'll start:

Gated Neighborhoods
Country Clubs
Private Golf Courses

It's not a "lake/river" thing, it's a human nature thing...


Try again. Those are private property. The lakes, navigable rivers, and wildlife of Texas belong to the people.
And the water to the river will still be accessible by the public ramp at I-35. Or the one on McQueeny at 78 or whatever that road is.

The water itself may be public domain, but the land surrounding it is not. As evidenced by one of the quotes above - people were selling access rights to Dunlap. They can't charge to be on the lake, but they can charge access via their private property to get to the lake.

Not much different than the Narrows access - the riverbed is public, the land around them is not and there is no duty by the landowners to grant access. Devil's River is another example of this.

The lakes were created to generate hydroelectric power. There is nothing that states that the lakes have to be there beyond those purposes, and hurting property values is a hard sell to me to force GBRA to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on dams that have no legitimate purpose anymore. Just my opinion.


The answer will lie in the declarations that created the GBRA. They are a political subdivision of the state of texas created by the power of the state and the state legislature.
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Sgt. Hartman
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In reply to Baseball-Junkie • 8:18p, 8/28/19
AG
But GBRA and the Friends of Lake Dunlap are telling the abutting property owners that for the dam to be rebuilt, they will need to form an entity to levy taxes and fund the dam re-build.

I am opposed to a recreational lake for the general public being created without public funding. If the public is going to use it, they should pay for it.
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normaleagle05
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In reply to Sgt. Hartman • 9:00p, 8/28/19
AG
Your understanding of why these lakes can never be completely private would benefit from your reading of Diversion Lake Club v Heath that I linked in a previous post. It doesn't matter who builds, owns, maintains, or operates a private dam with money from whatever source on a public way. The public owns the public way.
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Ol_Ag_02
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In reply to Baseball-Junkie • 9:02p, 8/28/19
AG
Baseball-Junkie said:
Ol_Ag_02 said:
Lake and river people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their lake / river".

It's human nature. It's no different than the people who aren't invested in those resources, wanting to take advantage of them.


Living on a river or lake doesn't make you more invested in them then anyone else. Well at least not outside of your own self inflated ego it doesn't. It's not your lake. Period. End of story.

Personally. If the lake isn't needed for electric or drinking water then tear that **** down. I'd rather it return to nature then appease a group of self entitled "lake owners".
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Ragoo
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In reply to normaleagle05 • 9:18p, 8/28/19
AG
Does the "owner" also have obligation to restore the public way?
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normaleagle05
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In reply to Ragoo • 9:26p, 8/28/19
AG
Ragoo said:
Does the "owner" also have obligation to restore the public way?

In this instance, as I understand it, "restoring" the public way should be read to mean "removing obstacles to navigation". ie, the dam.

Again, my understanding, the owner of the way has the power to remove it. But not the obligation.
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MouthBQ98
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9:38p, 8/28/19
AG
Fee for access?

I pay $15 or $20 to launch from Travis County parks on Lake Travis. It's a public lake, but everyone on it pays something towards it or having access to it.

What about a public private partnership. The public builds a new, simplified non-hydro dam, and then the local entity and those that use the lake fund ongoing maintenance?
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Burdizzo
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In reply to MouthBQ98 • 9:47p, 8/28/19
AG
MouthBQ98 said:
Fee for access?

I pay $15 or $20 to launch from Travis County parks on Lake Travis. It's a public lake, but everyone on it pays something towards it or having access to it.

What about a public private partnership. The public builds a new, simplified non-hydro dam, and then the local entity and those that use the lake fund ongoing maintenance?


That fee you pay to use the boat ramp at a county park is probably going to maintain the park, not the dam.
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normaleagle05
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In reply to MouthBQ98 • 9:51p, 8/28/19
AG
Fee for access works where a political subdivision acquires rights for an access point specifically for that purpose and therefore controls the conditions for access. Diversion Lake Club v Heath makes it clear that a public road right-of-way becomes a public way to the water. There is another case that I can't cite off hand making it clear that you can't prevent the public from accessing a river at a public road crossing with fencing (or maybe it's DVC v H as well).

The roads intersecting these long lakes make partnerships difficult because the public WILL have access due to the length of the impoundment. The convenience of the access is the question.
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schmellba99
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In reply to Kenneth_2003 • 1:32p, 8/29/19
AG
Kenneth_2003 said:
schmellba99 said:
Ol_Ag_02 said:
aggiejumper said:
(Insert any class of person/group) people always want to make it as difficult as possible for the common man to access "their (insert the class location they are vested in)".

I'll start:

Gated Neighborhoods
Country Clubs
Private Golf Courses

It's not a "lake/river" thing, it's a human nature thing...


Try again. Those are private property. The lakes, navigable rivers, and wildlife of Texas belong to the people.
And the water to the river will still be accessible by the public ramp at I-35. Or the one on McQueeny at 78 or whatever that road is.

The water itself may be public domain, but the land surrounding it is not. As evidenced by one of the quotes above - people were selling access rights to Dunlap. They can't charge to be on the lake, but they can charge access via their private property to get to the lake.

Not much different than the Narrows access - the riverbed is public, the land around them is not and there is no duty by the landowners to grant access. Devil's River is another example of this.

The lakes were created to generate hydroelectric power. There is nothing that states that the lakes have to be there beyond those purposes, and hurting property values is a hard sell to me to force GBRA to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on dams that have no legitimate purpose anymore. Just my opinion.


The answer will lie in the declarations that created the GBRA. They are a political subdivision of the state of texas created by the power of the state and the state legislature.
The declarations state that GRBA has the authority to sell power and water and to construct the infrastructure necessary to do so (paraphrased, I read it a while back now) and to manage the water rights of the rivers for both municipal and irrigation purposes. It states absolutely nothing about any obligation to maintain a dam for the purpose of a recreational lake.

GRBA was created to manage the waters of the Guadalupe (Blanco added later) and to build infrastructure to provide water and power to those in their district. That's it. The lakes are strictly a by-product of the need at the time to create hydroelectric power. 100% by product. There is no obligation to keep those lakes if GRBA is not selling power.

Now, courts may change that. Legislation may change that. But that is yet to come I suppose.
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schmellba99
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In reply to Burdizzo • 1:39p, 8/29/19
AG
Burdizzo said:
MouthBQ98 said:
Fee for access?

I pay $15 or $20 to launch from Travis County parks on Lake Travis. It's a public lake, but everyone on it pays something towards it or having access to it.

What about a public private partnership. The public builds a new, simplified non-hydro dam, and then the local entity and those that use the lake fund ongoing maintenance?


That fee you pay to use the boat ramp at a county park is probably going to maintain the park, not the dam.
Exactly. The dam on Lake Travis is owned, operated and maintained by LCRA, who has a host of income sources - including power sales and distribution and water (municipal and irrigation) sales from the Colorado River that funds the maintenance of those structures.

Boat ramp launch fees are park maintenance (including the boat ramp itself) fees.

Odds are LCRA has different rules regarding where and how they can spend money than GBRA as well. Each authority is unique and has unique constraints that were placed on them when they were incorporated by the legislature.
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aggiejumper
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2:32p, 9/5/19
AG
Quote:
The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority on Thursday was sued by two different groups of property owners ahead of its planned dewatering of four lakes along the Guadalupe River scheduled for later this month.
Attorney Ricardo Cedillo, representing 10 named plaintiffs from lakes McQueeney and Placid, is seeking a temporary injunction in a Guadalupe County court to block the planned dewatering, which GBRA officials have deemed necessary because of a continued concern about an imminent and potentially fatal dam failure.
Doug Sutter, an attorney who owns a home on McQueeney, filed a suit with 295 plaintiffs against GBRA, its executives and its board of directors, who are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Sutter is seeking a temporary restraining order.

Both suits are ultimately aimed at the same target preventing the GBRA from draining lakes McQueeney, Placid, Meadow and Gonzales. The agency's two other lakes are gone. A spill gate at Lake Wood broke in March 2016, and another at Lake Dunlap failed in May. Both lakes dewatered, and only the natural channel of the Guadalupe River remains in those two areas.

The petitions filed Thursday both allege that the GBRA's plan to drain the lakes constitutes both a "taking" under the Texas Constitution and "inverse condemnation." Allowing the lakes to be drained, both attorneys wrote separately, would cause irreparable harm.
Elected officials and property owners have been pleading with the GBRA to reverse the decision to drain the lakes, but General Manager and CEO Kevin Patteson has said that there's no information or proposal that could move the agency to not proceed. That would only happen, he's said, if his board of directors overturned his decision or the courts grant an injunction.
The legal maneuvering begins. Will be interesting to follow the course of events.
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Burdizzo
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2:43p, 9/5/19
AG
It takes a lot of balls to sue someone like GBRA and imply the dams are not a public safety hazard after two of them failed recently.
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Ragoo
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2:52p, 9/5/19
AG
I wonder, why not lower the lakes during winter and weld the gates completely shut. Inoperable. Water constantly flows over them now. Make them a fixed weir.
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agcivengineer
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2:52p, 9/5/19
AG
I wonder if the same people who are sueing GBRA are also willing to sign their names that they will take on all the liability /responsibility when the next dam fails. Funny how that works.
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aggiejumper
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In reply to Burdizzo • 2:53p, 9/5/19
AG
Their safety hazard is based off of all spillways failing simultaneously (that would be an issue if that happened). That has not happened on the 2 collapses and most likely won't as the weakest spillway will fail thereby alleviating the pressure on the others.

Regardless, this will be in interesting case to follow. Lots of money on both sides of the issue.
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