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Upper Valley Developer Terrorizes Neighborhood.
One of the banes of the new destruction re... Development in the Upper Valley is the latest section of farmland being laid to waste by developer Randy O’Leary. You may recall we reported two years ago that before anyone heard about zoning changes... No one was notified because no one was within 250 ft. of the proposed zoning change... Then City Rep. Jan Summarily gave developer O’Leary all that he could have hoped for. A huge tract of land zoned not R-1 as it should have been... Not R-2the bare minimum... Not R-3... not R-3A... not even R-4. The developer got R-3A, the most dense zoning for residential homes and the blight was on.
But, this is not the total picture. When they were de-watering the land to for the next phase... On the north side of Artcraft... They made a great pond where once an alfalfa filed was thriving. This was just when West Nile Virus came into our area. The El Paso County Health Department did nothing to stop this mosquito breeding ground... guess who else is in the developers pocket... and several residents in the area came down with West Nile Virus.
Developers like O’Leary have had such a coozy relationship with the City of El Paso Planning Department and probably others as well that they go about their business with out a care in the world about the neighborhood they are destroying.
This latest environmental attack on the neighborhood was again a de-watering project for the more west portion of a new phase. They pumped the water from the soil into the Borderland Spur Drain and while the water was being pumped... you couldn’t tell what was what.
Well, you could if you ask residents. Their wells were being damaged and their pumps were being stressed as they tried and tried to get some water out of the well.
Once, the de-watering was halted... calls to Rep. Lilly by residents made some one pay attention... they would have gone on pumping water out of the top-soil and damaging trees and orchards in the area.... the water level could be determined.
The whole mile section of the Borderland Spur Drain was now bone dry. They had pumped so much water out that the water level all the way from Bailey Road north of Borderland to Artcraft south of Borderland was without any water.
All the wildlife that lived in the drain died. That included minnows.
This makes for a dangerous situation when the rains start to make puddles in the drain. There are now no minnows to eat them.
(Photos: Brax - Valley Publishing Company)
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Editor, Upper Valley Beacon
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