Posted on 07/16/2008 12:13:08 PM PDT by NCDragon
SANTA ROSA, Texas — During a recent afternoon storm, brothers Angel and Salvador Badillo sat under a tin roof with a couple of friends, sipping beers as the open drainage ditch in front of their clapboard house filled like a moat.
Soon, neighbors' septic tanks could begin to overflow, creating a smelly and potentially disease-ridden mess.
The homes in Grande Acres - a colonia, or slapped-together neighborhood, on low-lying land 12 miles north of the Rio Grande - were supposed to get sewer service years ago through a nearly $4 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. But the city of Santa Rosa, of which Grande Acres is a part, failed to take advantage of the money, and the 2002 grant expired.
In fact, at least $78 million of the $300 million appropriated by Congress during the 1990s to improve Texas' colonias has gone unspent, according to a recent EPA audit. And with construction costs and other expenses soaring, numerous colonias have had to scale back or give up on some projects.
The EPA says some small-town governments lack the professional staff needed to pull off some of these complex projects, while other ventures have been torpedoed by local infighting and bungling. The audit also accused the EPA of lax oversight that allowed projects to drift.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
I could use $4 million...
“Colonias”? Does that mean we are being colonized?
I guess so...
These ‘colonia’ are nothing but makeshift shanty towns created by illegals. They’re all over the place in south Texas. They are havens for drug dealers, theives and coyotes.
Why our gov’t is spending money helping these people, rather than deporting them, is beyond me. Must be part of our Mexico First policy.
How about $4 million to kick their illegal aliens butts back over the border and be done with it?
Your government at work. Unscrupulous developers make a bundle selling these lots without any improvements whatsoever, then the taxpayers have to come up with literally billions to build the infrastructure for these “poor little people,” but their communities can’t even get it together to spend the money. Sounds a lot like....Mexico.
Bulldozers aren’t that expensive.
More to the point, why is the EPA earmarking "grants" to illegal aliens?
Mind-boggling.
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