Burnett Ranch Road at Buffalo Lake has had flooding issues before, pre-drought in 2008.
But now, residents have been dealing with a long detour since last year’s flood.
“I had to ship 18 truckloads of cattle, and every one of them had to go that way to get out when they could’ve gone three miles to get on the highway,” Brandon McAlister said. “Going that way ten minutes, and we’re there. Now it takes 20-25 minutes to get to a town.”
In addition to causing inconveniences to farmers like Brandon McAlister, Precinct 3 Commissioner Barry Mahler said it’s an emergency risk, too.
“Our main concern is the flow of emergency vehicles,” Commissioner Barry Mahler said. “If one of our Sheriff’s cruisers needed to respond, they have to go around and they can’t take this direct route. Same thing for fire and ambulances, so emergency vehicles is our main concern.”
But the question is, how can you fix it, with continuous spring rains in the forecast?
Step one is to get the lake levels down.
“Which could be a number of months because we’ve got to have a place to go with the water,” Commissioner Mahler said “The city of Iowa Park owns it, they’re working with us to try to get the water levels down but they’ve got to have a place to go with it.”
Once the level in the lower lake goes down, they can release some of the water in Buffalo Lake, and once that problem is solved, with funding assistance from FEMA, they’ll work on building the level of the road up so they can avoid problems in the future.
“It’s on the radar, it’s something we want done, we will get it fixed,” Commissioner Mahler said. “It’s just time is going to be the problem.”
So for now, they are just waiting for a mini-drought so the water will go down.
(Information from TexomasHomepage.com)
