WHITETAIL ESTATES NEWS CONFERENCE 8/14/08
GOOD MORNING !! On Behalf of the Whitetail Architectural Control Committee, the Whitetail Water Committee and all the residents of Whitetail Estates I want to Thank You for coming out today to listen and participate in our News Conference.
As most of you know, last Saturday we had our second home burn (basically to the Ground) in less than 8 months. These tragic losses are not due to inaction by the fire departments that serve our area. The problem is that Whitetail has no fire hydrants.
The departments that responded to Saturday's fire did an outstanding job in fighting the fire and preventing it from spreading to fields and ultimately other houses. They were severely resource limited buy the lack of fire hydrants in the subdivision. To give you an idea of the response to this fire we had engines from Leander, Cedar Park, Weir, Jollyville, Sam Bass and Round Rock. There may have been some additional tankers from other areas. This was a FIRST CLASS RESPONSE !!!! We just didn't have the water to help them out.
The Whitetail Subdivision was established in 1978. I moved to Whitetail in 1985. At that time there was nothing but ranch land around us. In the late 80's we tried to get water into the subdivision. Georgetown was ready to provide the water, but we had to run the pipe all the way from the city limits to our subdivision and then pipe our subdivision. Whitetail was only about half full of houses if even that. We made other attempts to try and get water into the subdivision since then. We were approached by the City of Georgetown and Mr. McGee who was developing the tracts South and West of the subdivision about 4 years ago. There is now a water line just in front of our Subdivision. At one point Mr. McGee was going to run his lines through Whitetail and basically help us out with some of the infrastructure. This option fell apart. We as a community started a Water Committee to investigate the options to get water into Whitetail. We have some options and information, but we need a good Estimate from an Engineering firm before we can go before the County Commissioners to establish a Water Control and Improvement District. To date we have not been able to get an estimate from any firm.
Another problem is that I estimate the cost to be $2 - 2.5 Million. Spread across 223 homes / lots makes it very expensive for the residents. We need help from the County, State, and City of Georgetown to get this price down so the cost to each resident is not so high. We are not opposed to paying for the system if we can get the price down so the yearly tax rate would be reasonable. Here we sit with water to the north , West and South and we have none. And at this time no prospects to get any.
We called this Press Conference to bring our problem to the media's attention and to see what other avenues may be open to us to get water and Fire Hydrants for Whitetail. We are not looking for a free ride. We are more than willing to participate. We just need a little help !!!
Thank You for attending today's news conference!!! I hope you will follow this activity as it unfolds and maybe if we are successful you can spread the advice to other subdivisions that are in similar situations. We were fortunate with these two house fires, no one was injured or killed. Lets try to keep it this way in Whitetail and spread the same to other subdivisions.
THANK YOU AGAIN !!!!!
Frank Hanson
Member - WACC
Chairman - Water Committee