PSB Supports Transmountain Highway; Opposes Complete Open Space

The Public Service Board has passed a resolution supporting the state’s proposed highway along Transmountain Road and opposing complete preservation of the publicly owned land surrounding the project.

The PSB manages about 800 acres of city-owned land in that part of Northwest El Paso. PSB President Ed Archuleta said they have to save some land for development to prevent water rate hikes. “Ninety-five percent of any land sale go to the water utility and managed by the public service board so any time that we can sell land to the extend that we can maximize its value that means that that’s less money that has to be asked of the ratepayer that pay the water and sewer bill,” he said.

Dr. Richard Bonart, the only PSB member to vote against the resolution, said the Texas Department of Transportation’s freeway plan was too flawed to support. “It’s an $80 million project and for people not to be on board and everybody moving in that direction for that much money and that magnitude of a project speaks for itself,” he said during an interview.

Bonart added that preserving the only scenic corridor in the city should be a priority: “The majority of citizens in El Paso, when they look at that area, they think it’s special and they want to save as much of it as they can.”

The PSB also voted to support the city’s recent decision to zone the land as smart code – a designation that calls for more walkable communities, prevents sprawl, and allows for some preservation of natural resources. The board agreed to smart code, with the condition that it could be catered to allow them to develop chunks of land. Archuleta pointed out that the PSB’s current plan for the area still preserves some of the corridor.

Open Space advocates, though, are not satisfied. Charlee Wakeem, an Open Space Advisory Board member, said there is about a mile of land from Gas Line Road on Transmountain to a proposed highway overpass that holds an arroyo and unique foothills. He said those would be destroyed when the PSB sold the land for development. Archuleta agreed to meet with those proposing open space, but said the entire coveted mile with the arroyos and foothills could not be saved from development.

“If we can do a little bit more of opening up that corridor and try to work with them, maybe what we add there, maybe we can take off in some other areas and see if there’s any way that we could look at something that might make that happen without all of the controversy that’s developed over this whole plan,” said Archuleta.

In a staunch opposition to the PSB, a group of citizens has petitioned city council to zone the area around the highway as natural open space. The Franklin Mountains Environmental Coalition gathered the more than 1500 signatures required to get city council to vote on the issue again. If they vote against natural open space, then the group can gather the signatures again and bring the issue to voters in the November election.