City Leaders Once Again Being Reactive

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

To quote one of my favorites songs by the Airborne Toxic Event, it happened some time around midnight. 

Brownsvillians thought they had been spared as Thursday was relatively dry after rain poured down earlier in the week. Mother Nature, however, seems to have a sense of humor.

Consulting with God, and after hearing all those prayers for rain, the powers-that-be who watch over Earth unleashed a whole lot of thunder, lightning, and rain on our fair city in the early hours of Friday morning.

In classic Brownsville fashion, the streets flooded. Most of them were streets we're used to hearing flood — Boca Chica, Palm Boulevard, Central Boulevard near the dip by the hospital, some parts of Southmost, Ringgold by the zoo, Barnard by the duck resaca, and, of course, the majority of the arteries criss-crossing Downtown.

But this time, streets that normally didn't flood were flooding. Newer residential areas across North Brownsville were flooded. Areas where resacas are at were overflowing, including the apartment complex close to Commissioner Tetreau's car wash to the point where the parking areas were all underwater.

It's the same old song and dance. It rains; Brownsville floods. Maybe county and city leaders should ask Elon Musk for a few more millions to improve our drainage infrastructure.

Earlier in the week, Mayor Trey Mendez asked constituents to message him or call the city because some people around town have said their neighborhood's had not seen a brush truck for a couple of months despite the brush collectors saying they were caught up.

Why do the city engineers, code enforcement, and public works administrators fail to come up with a viable solution to fix Brownsville's drainage system? Yes, city leaders should lean in those departments to come up with a solution, but even I can't keep using city hall as a punching bag and blame them for everything that happens. Besides, we have a city manager form of government. Why isn't Noel Bernal telling the mayor and commissioners our drainage infrastructure is in critical need for upgrade and repair? Why isn't he following up with the departments responsive for servicing the resacas and the streets? 

Why weren't the resacas the city can manipulate the water levels lowered? The National Weather Service, and every local news organization predicted torrential downpours for the area.

And, more importantly, we know hurricane season brings these extreme weather situations even if a hurricane isn't threatening the area. We all have weather apps on our phone. You don't need a degree in meteorology to know a rainstorm is coming.

I'm not an engineer, architect, or urban planner, but something must be done. Federal funds can be sought. Instead of pet projects like bike trails, naming streets after people with money, and moving dilapidated houses that should have been fixed a long time ago, we should attack the legitimate problems we have here in Brownsville. Our infrastructure is crumbling and our streets are badly flooding. You would think city leaders and administrators would take a lesson from the building collapse in Florida. You would think they'd listen to the complaints of street flooding that have been circulating ever since I was born. 

This week was the 33rd anniversary of the Tienda Amigo tragedy. City officials at the time said we could have avoided as many fatalities we had if Brownsville would have had the modern, larger ambulances rather than the smaller passenger van sizes ambulances the city had at the time.

Will Brownsville have another tragedy on its hands before they realize the city needs to be proactive rather than reactive? 

Let's hope the citizenry doesn't have to pay such a high price.