North Pointe venture

Front page news: “Council OK’s new 27-home North Pointe subdivision”. It is interesting how time changes our development of projects in our City. A few years back another developer approached our City with a similar proposal. A plat was drawn up, streets included. It was to be a gated subdivision for those 55 years and older. Your scribe sat on the City Council at the time and I personally thought it a good idea. Our City Manager Bingham at the time evidently thought otherwise and threw a big wrench into the works.

Bingham declared that for the division to be built the developer, my good friend Claude Cappel, now deceased, would have to pay for paving all the proposed streets and sidewalks in accordance with City specifications, and install the sewer, water, underground power and gas utilities. To do so put the whole project way beyond the finances available and would make each lot prohibitive in price. The developer withdrew his proposal. Gee who stands to make a profit from the utilities to be installed? Might the City have a little skin in the game and make some investment in the project? Not according to Bingham!

So it isn’t hard to understand why a good percentage of the new building around our small cities in Nebraska gets done outside of City Limits. No city rules and no city taxes. What is there not to like?

It will be interesting to watch and see how this North Point subdivision develops. Will it get built and make much-needed new housing available or will it again be torpedoed by city bureaucrats wanting to hold on to their power? Good Luck.

In another article in the Gazette, the subject was complaining that “Sixty-one times last year, a semi-truck loaded with about 30 tons of solar salt arrived from Utah to keep McCook’s water treatment plant in operation. During heavy use in the summer, two trucks a week are required, at $5,000 a load, for a cost of $286,000, about $66,000 more than budgeted for.” Again in this former Councilman’s memory, this is an avoidable expense. A friend and clear-thinking entrepreneur Claude Cappel and his capable engineer had planned how to build a new water field to pump City water north and a bit east of town to produce water from the Ogallala Aquifer. Claude had visited with the owners of a large area of privately owned undeveloped pastureland who were favorable to the project. Water from the deep wells would then be pumped to the surface and would gravity flow by pipeline into the tops of our water storage standpipe reservoirs. No new one-million-gallon storage tank needed.

Water from the Ogallala Aquifer is almost entirely pure and not loaded with the high amounts of alkali found in water from the Republican Aquifer. That project would have only required an injection of chlorine to meet municipal/state standards. Claude had the permission of the landowners to build the pumping stations and pipeline to McCook until Bingham and his henchman City Attorney intervened. Unaccompanied by any Councilmember or Cappel they met and made unacceptable demands from the landowners who evidently said NO. Councilman Phil Lyons (D) also did not like the project for some reason and lobbied against it from a booth at the County Fair.

The result was that the City then build a new well field just south of town to pump the high alkaline water from the more shallow Republican Aquifer. That water then had to be treated with the highly expensive new Municipal Water Plant with its reverse osmosis (RO) machines required to take out the impurities naturally occurring in that water. It is little known to most residents that the process only takes out only enough of the alkali impurities to make the water sample acceptable to Nebraska required standards instead of the pureness of Ogallala Aquifer water and yes they also inject chlorine. I with the minority of your City Council was outvoted. Our bureaucracy at work; future expense be damned.

Incidentally, in about the same time frame our neighboring city of Cambridge needing a renewed municipal water system went to the north, drilled into the Ogallala Aquifer and built a pipeline back into their village. I’ve heard no complaints about the cost or quality of their city water.

Disturbing to this Federal tax-paying citizen is the current blizzard of appeals to join in lawsuits against Camp Lejeune for those who served there and now have a variety of ills like cancer. Our Congress recently passed a bill to pay out large sums to GIs that claim to have a variety of problems from inhaling smoke from “burn pits” the method of disposing of sanitary waste, in the Near East. For years large numbers of former military personnel who served in Vietnam claimed injuries from our use of Agent Orange to denude vegetation and make the enemy more visible. And yes I too am eligible for the tax-free compensation but have not contacted any of the diseases that make me eligible for the free tax money.

It looks to me that a host of lawyers are getting rich from bringing lawsuits and claims against our government. It is interesting that it is all federal tax-raised money that is being handed out. Especially when I have seen studies of the flight crews, “Ranch Hand”, that sprayed the Agent Orange, handled it every day and sometimes were drenched in the stuff. Those personnel are tracked and have shown no more incidences of contracting the proscribed diseases than the average US population of same-age personnel in the US that were never exposed to Agent Orange. It is also interesting that studies also show that aerial applicators (crop dusters) also do not show a higher rate of contracting cancer and the host of other diseases than the general population of our beloved USofA. To me the whole thing is a scam that just makes your and my tax bill much higher than it need be.

Good news: Grannie Annie and this old guy haven’t gone out to sample the new ice cream emporium in town but we are hearing good reports. Our hope though is that the Rambali’s “Scoop” is a huge success. So far it looks like it is going well with long lines winding clear out the door at times. Enjoy.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail