Property owners line up to opt out of Kerrville CCN

About 150 property owners in a proposed certificate of convenience and necessity area have requested to be excluded from a plan to provide Kerrville water outside the city.

According to public works director Charlie Hastings, if all of the requests are approved, it would cut 21,600 acres, or about 36 percent, out of the 59,000 acres in the request.

Land owners who have 25 acres or more who asked to opt out will be automatically excluded, while others who have fewer acreage will have to present their requests to the city council.

Hastings said the city staff expects to present the requests to opt out and an update on the city’s application to the city council in February.

The next step will be a public hearing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to hear from people who have contested the city’s certificate of convenience and necessity application.

That hearing could be a year away, according to Hastings.

“They may ask us to modify our application based on the hearing, but what that could be is Pandora’s box. No body knows,” Hastings said.

City officials have said that approval of the plan to provide water to future developments beyond the city limits will improve public safety in those areas and ultimately save city taxpayers’ money.

Currently, there are a hodgepodge of water providers and few regulations. City Councilman Bruce Motheral has said that because of the loose regulations many subdivisions may not have adequate water flow for fighting fires.

In addition to the public safety issue, officials have said those areas could not be annexed into the city without costly infrastructure improvements.

If the TCEQ approves the city’s request for a certificate of convenience and necessity, the city would be able to set the standards for developers who want to connect to the municipal water system or negotiate standards with developers who still want to install their own water system.

Property owners who already have wells or get water from another utility provider would not be affected, but a city certificate of convenience and necessity could prevent existing utility companies from expanding their service within that area.

MArk Armstrong, Kerrville Daily Times