Socorro vs. Horizon – Pipe Dreams
There was a hearing today for a case that sounds a lot like a plot to a movie. Picture this: A poor Latino community that is in the throws of an identity crisis trying to feel its way in the world and torn between being known as a city or rural community, takes a powerful, all-Anglo, utility district to court. Sounds like a movie, but it isn't. The City of Socorro and Horizon are locked in a battle over, of all things, waste water. Not for who gets it, but essentially who gets stuck with it. According to the arguments made in court, here's how things transpired. In 2006 the Horizon Municipal Utility District (MUD), an elected board, planned for a $2.2 million expansion of their waste water project. In 2009 MUD applied for and obtained a permit to do so from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The project was to pipe waste water from Horizon through some county areas and the city of Socorro in to an area in Socorro and eventually in to the Rio Grande. That's pre...