Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson wants to sell pristine mountain land adjacent to the pristine Big Bend National Park to private owners, and he is rejecting an offer by the National Park service to buy the land, because he wants to property to be available to hunters. Jerry Patterson claims this is a second amendment issue.
Here is an article about the original sale which had to be canceled because of a survey error:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/us/19mountains.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The high bidder of six on Tuesday was Louis A. Waters, retired founding chairman of Browning-Ferris Industries, who offered $652,000, or about $70 an acre. He pledged to keep the property wild for study and research, and added in his proposal: “Under no circumstances would we open the Christmas Mountains to the public.”
I don't know about you, but having a waste treatment guy own those mountains would have made me feel so good. However, that sale was voided and now a new one is planned--even though the National Park Service offer is now on the table.
http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/271900.html The property was donated to the state 16 years ago by the Virginia-based Conservation Fund and the Pennsylvania-based Richard King Mellon Foundation on the condition that it remains protected from development. It is now in the inventory of the Permanent School Fund, with state-enforced development prohibitions that will remain no matter who acquires the property.
Then-Land Commissioner Garry Mauro told the donors that the state would allow the transfer of the land only to the National Park Service or the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. But for financial reasons, both agencies declined the property.
On Oct. 12, however, Big Bend National Park Superintendent William Wellman told Patterson in a letter that the National Park Service wanted to re-evaluate its position and called on the land commissioner to delay the sale. Patterson declined the request, explaining that it is his belief that the National Park Service enforces unconstitutional restrictions on firearms in national parks.
I think Jerry Patterson is full of shit. Southwest Texas has plenty of wide open spaces for hunting. There is one thing it lacks, however, and that is water. Good old H2O. My gut tells me that this is a simple case of some private business interest trying to buy up a lot of the most important natural resource that the Rio Grande Valley lacks. And I am sure they will let some of their business buddies shoot for quail and dove and deer around their water pumps.
I must apologize in advance. I am not a geologist. Most of this I learned the new fashioned way, from Google. There are several aquifers in west Texas, but the one that underlies the Big Bend region is the Igneous Aquifer. Scroll down to the second half of this report:
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publications/reports/GroundWaterReports/GWReports/Report%20356/Chapter12_13.pdfto learn that the Igneous Aquifer has water that is much purer than most other Texas aquifers. Here are the results of in depth study conducted by the state about how to draw water from the various aquifers in the region.
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/gam/bol_ig/bol_ig.htmInteresting note: if I am reading this right, water is found in pockets 3000 feet above sea level or higher so you will not get it if you drill flat ground, you have to start on hills or mountains.
If is pretty common knowledge to everyone in the southwest that the Rio Grande Valley is in desperate need of water all the time, so I am not going to cite any references. Just Google it if you want to learn more. I was interested to learn that developers are starting to do to the once sparsely populated area around Marfa, Alpine and Big Bend what Bugsy Siegle did to Las Vegas. Check out this ad:
http://texaslandco.com/landforsale/tx/brewster/terlingua.htmlThen, there is the Bush administration's plan to build a great big fat highway corridor through beautiful quiet Marfa/Alpine/Big Bend, which has already seen housing prices rise and new development because of an influx of artists and the wealthy:
http://recenter.tamu.edu/Tgrande/vol14-3/1819.html On one side, residents primarily from the Alpine and Marfa areas are fighting to stop what they consider a threat to their pristine Big Bend environment and serene quality of life. On the other side is MOTRAN, the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance. Together with a number of other communities in the region, MOTRAN is attempting to diversify and expand the West Texas economic base beyond agriculture and oil and gas into trade and transportation.
No matter what kind if growth the area sees---more Santa Fe style mansions or more truck stops and motels---if someone lucks into a bunch of water, they are sitting on a west Texas gold mine.
The Texas Land Commissioner, Jerry Patterson says that the land is being sold to private interests who never intend to develop it, just hunt it. If you believe this, I have some other west Texas mountain land to sell you. Private developers buy land for one reason. Though Patterson says that the land can never be developed, if the new home owners and businesses of the Alpine/Marfa area are desperate for water, and if there is water to be had and someone is willing to drill for it, the water will be exploited, even if it does terrible damage to the environment of the Christmas Mountains and Big Bend National Park. And if a private developer owns the land, he or she will make a big profit.
This is just a hunch. If there are any geologists, especially with an interest in environmental issues would you please comment? Maybe there is no way to get at the water under the Christmas Mountains. However, something tells me that there is, and that this is the real reason why Patterson is braving the scorn and derision that is being heaped upon him, even from Texas hunters, most of whom can not understand why he is not letting the National Park Service fold the Christmas Mountains into Big Bend, our most beloved state park.
One last point. How on earth can turning the Christmas Mountain into one great big hunting range preserve it in its natural
pristine (favorite word of everyone for the Big Bend area) state? Patterson has a screw loose. Or else, someone is doing someone else a Texas sized favor.