If we don’t want sprawl why do we subsidize it?

My primary goal with this blog site is to draw some attention to the relationship between utility extension policies and suburban sprawl in San Antonio. I was prompted to do so by a couple of recent articles in the San Antonio Express-News.

Those two articles can be found under the tab heading “Leaders Notice Sprawl”. In the articles Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and Express-News Managing Editor Robert Rivard react to recently-released census data that shows, as Rivard says; “we are growing in all the wrong places.” Wolff describes the area’s growth patterns as a “nightmare.”

County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson said; “All this calls into question our support for suburban sprawl and the danger of staying down the same road we've been on.”

I think Adkisson has hit the nail squarely on the head. Thus, I am posting several news articles that support the point I think he is trying to make.

Under the tab heading “Express-News Articles” I have posted three articles written in that newspaper in 2007.

Under the tab heading “Western Canyon Pipeline” I have posted a series of articles I wrote for the Boerne Star in 2006.

If you don’t have time to read all of these articles I have created an exclusive page for the one article that I think is the most illustrative of Adkisson's statement, under the tab heading “A nice bouquet of flowers”.

The bottom line is this; if we don’t want sprawl why are SAWS ratepayers subsidizing it?

I explore this question and the broader issue of what to do about the San Antonio area's sprawl under the tab heading "Commentary".

Dave Pasley