Saturday, May 11, 2024
The Granbury City Council voted unanimously at its regular meeting on Oct. 3, to extend the city’s current development ban within the central, western, and eastern corporate city limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction.
“This is an ordinance that we have. There's no sense in elaborating on that,” said City Manager Chris Coffman, during the meeting on Tuesday. “We've been down this road before. We still don't have the capacity, or the permit cleared from the appeal process.”
A moratorium — meaning a temporary ban — was first enacted for new development in the eastern part of the city in December 2020, when there was a delay in building the second wastewater treatment plant caused by protests of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) permit application.
In September 2022, TCEQ commissioners sent the dispute to the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) for a contested case hearing, according to a previous article in the HCN. TCEQ unanimously approved the city's wastewater permit request on Oct. 5, 2022.
In October 2021, city officials made the moratorium city-wide due to growth in other parts of the city and because the current wastewater treatment plant was reaching capacity. Although upgrades are currently being made to that facility, city officials say that its’ capacity cannot be expanded.
The city’s moratorium is not a total halt to all development in the city, however. According to the city website, projects that meet certain timetables and/or conditions are allowed to proceed. This moratorium limits additional demand being added to an already overburdened wastewater system. Once the East WWTP is constructed and operational, the system issues will be resolved.
This is the fourth time that Granbury’s moratorium has been extended, from its original enaction in December 2020, to an extension on April 6, 2021, Oct. 4, 2021, and Sept. 20, 2022.
For more information or for questions on development, call the Community Development Department at 817-573-1114.
ashley@hcnews.com | 817-573-1243
