Sewage treatment facility near Rainbow Valley being proposed
Photos provided by the Denton Record-Chronicle
For nearly 50 years, the property owners of Rainbow Valley have lived like hobbits from the Shire on a swath of Texas’ quickly disappearing Blackland Prairie.
Rainbow Valley is located just east of Sanger off of McReynolds Road. It is 220 acres of nature with a wildlife refuge where everyone built their own homes, first as earth cement dome-shaped ones, later with wood they recycled.
It’s a place whose fate is tied to the wildlife in the area, longtime resident Jerry Langley said in 2023 to the Texas Land Conservancy, which gave the property a nature easement. Their neighbor Jim Horn, a former state representative, said he gave an easement on his property so Rainbow Valley could have electricity run to it.
“They probably didn’t tell you that, did they?” he chuckled.
Horn and his neighbors had gotten along for many years. One property owner, Sam Alexander, supported Horn’s wife, Mary, a longtime Denton County judge, and got other neighbors to support her bids for office. Mary Horn, who died last year, helped Alexander, other neighbors and even Rainbow Valley stop a gas distribution center in 2011. It would have been near the property the Horns owned.
About 10 years later, Horn is selling the property near Rainbow Valley to Dallas developer Megatel Homes. The company filed a petition with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Sept. 16 to build a sewage treatment facility for a planned MUD development.
A Municipal Utility District (MUD) is a political subdivision of Texas that provides utility services to a defined area. MUDs are created by the Texas Legislature or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Overview of MUDs
MUDs provide services such as: water, sewage, drainage, parks, and roads. MUDs are a way for developers to finance infrastructure without relying on the city. The developer funds the infrastructure, and the MUD issues bonds to pay them back. The MUD then raises revenue through taxes and fees on property owners to repay the bonds and maintain the district.
Here are some other things to know about MUDs:
The creation of MUDs began in 1904 to address the need to manage water availability for people, crops, and livestock.
The Gulf Coast area was particularly aggressive in creating water districts.
Living in a MUD may result in higher taxes, which mortgage lenders may take into account when evaluating a loan application. MUDs are funded through bonds, taxes, fees, and assessments.
Application
The permit application is currently under the comment submission phase at the TCEQ. According to the application, the facility will have a daily discharge not to exceed 950,000 gallons into an unnamed tributary that Langley called Enoch Creek, which he said in a Nov. 12 email “would bear the brunt of the outflow from the proposed sewage treatment plant.”
TCEQ sent letters alerting about 20 nearby property owners that the time to file protests or comments had opened. Since then several people have submitted comments and requested a public meeting along with a contested hearing with TCEQ.
City Council already aware
Locally, several spoke to the Sanger City Council on Monday, as well. The council had already met in executive session more than a month ago, on November 4th to discuss this item. There are legal issues which prevent them from publicly commenting. They can only say, “We share your concerns.” They have been advised by City Attorney, Hugh Coleman, not to put this on the agenda. They have been in discussions with County Commissioner Ryan Williams, Denton County, City of Denton, and attorneys. Council member Marissa Barrett asked that they receive more information on MUD districts in general so they can educate their constituents because she has been getting a lot of emails/questions about MUDs. Councilman Gary Bilyeu said they have recently had 6 MUD proposals.
Cities and towns in Texas don’t have control over MUDs, and don’t get any tax revenue from them, even though they have to provide fire/police service.
Kelli Alexander, who is one of the organizers protesting the proposed sewage treatement facility thanked everyone who attended and spoke at the Sanger City Council in opposition of it. They have started a Facebook page: “Let’s Stop The Stink-Sanger!”
She is encouraging residents to please take a moment to submit a comment opposing the project and to please request a public meeting, and ask to be added to the mailing list.
Enter the Permit # WQ0016624001
Read the other comments at:
Learn more from this Denton Record-Chronicle:
Denton is also planning to protest the proposed sewage treatment facility, according to a city official.
“It’s a disaster,” Langley said. “It is right next to a very nice wildlife refuge and would wreak havoc on it. We are the main proposed dump for the outflow. It runs through the creek and goes down to Clear Creek.”
The MUDs
Jim and Mary Horn tried selling the property in 2022 to a developer and filed a petition with the Sanger City Council, seeking support for the creation of Clear Creek Municipal Utility District No. 1 of Denton County. They wrote that a MUD was needed because the area would have “immediate future” residential and commercial growth but didn’t have adequate water supply or sanitary sewer facilities and services, according to the Aug. 17, 2022, petition.
Sources said Sanger doesn’t have the capacity to provide water and sewer services. Horn was also under the impression that Denton couldn’t offer those services when the Denton Record-Chronicle spoke with him, recently.
That MUD never materialized, Horn said, due to high interest rates and the developer backing out.
After his wife’s death, Horn started looking to sell the property again. He said that Megatel Homes came highly recommended from people in positions of power that he knows.
Megatel Homes is known for its lagoon communities, a mixture of single- and multifamily housing with a giant human-made lagoon — some with 10 million to 35 million gallons of water — in the center of the development. Several such developments have been built around North Texas in recent years.
Earlier this year, Megatel Homes began construction on a $1 billion residential community centered around what WFAA-TV called “a massive lagoon” in Anna, a city of about 30,000 people north of McKinney. The development at full buildout is projected to add more than 7,000 people, according to WFAA’s April 12 report.
The lagoon on Horn’s property would cover about 26 acres off FM2153, and the development at full buildout would cover about 830 acres off McReynolds Road and FM2153, over to Union Hill Road, according to the current version of the plan.
Horn is also creating a MUD for the development, now called the Northwest Utility District 1.
Megatel is building its lagoon communities at a time when the Texas Water Development Board projects Texas’ water supply will decrease by 18% by 2070 while demand will increase by 9%, leaving approximately one-quarter of Texas’ population facing municipal water shortages without additional supplies, according to a 2023 report by the Texas comptroller.
There’s also a groundwater shortage crisis in Texas, and Horn’s neighbors wonder where the developer will get the water for the facility to treat the sewage, let alone for a body of water.
“I did best the I could,” Horn said of picking Megatel. “I still live there. I’m still their neighbor and have been over 20 years.”
Denton’s protest
Denton is protesting Horn’s application to the TCEQ, not because of water issues but because it would mess with the utility’s regional water and sewage plan for the area. Stephen Gay, general manager of Denton’s water utilities, said that not only is the city already expanding the Pecan Creek sewage plant, it’s also in the process of a $195 million expansion of the drinking water facility at Ray Roberts Lake and another sewage treatment plant called the Clear Creek Facility on about 200 acres at Hartlee Field on the outskirts of Denton.
The updates are due to the growth and future growth affecting the area and will take roughly five years to complete, Gay said.
Denton is part of the Texas Water Development Board’s regional planning group, and the proposed sewage treatment facility on Horn’s property, Gay said, would be within Denton’s corporate limits.
“We would not want to see a lot of package plants peppered throughout our service area,” Gay said. “We want to have it all come into the Clear Creek Basin and coming into one of those facilities to treat it. It offers us a greater advantage to reclaim water.”
Denton hasn’t formally protested in the past, Gay said, but doing so begins the dialogue and puts Denton at the table for the discussion and helps articulate how these smaller package sewer plants such as the one proposed for Horn’s land affect local jurisdiction, especially since they are project-specific and not for the wider public.
But Gay said Denton could service Megatel’s planned development.
“The flows would be factored into the current expansion while the Clear Creek Facility was being constructed,” Gay wrote in a Nov. 12 email to the Record-Chronicle.
Horn wondered if city officials had shared that information with the developer.
“They never brought water or sewer or anything ever,” Horn said about Denton. “I don’t know why all of the sudden they are willing to do so.”
The meeting
In the Sept. 16 permit application, Horn and the other applicants checked that a public involvement plan was not applicable for the sewage treatment facility because “no significant interest in this permit is anticipated.”
But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
A few weeks ago, two dozen property owners — including Langley, Alexander and his wife, Kelli — gathered to plan their next steps in stopping the sewage treatment facility. All planned to send protests, many had already done so, and those who had offered handouts that explained the process and told them to request a public meeting.
“At the TCEQ public meeting, we’ll be able to confront Jim Horn and this Sanger group [Megatel] and ask them questions about the development and what their plans are,” property owner Katherine Dodd said.
Susan Moushegian shared the letter she was sending with the Record-Chronicle and wrote that she would be adversely affected, as well as every resident in the surrounding area, if the permit is allowed. She said the sewer treatment facility is only the beginning of the infrastructure for the development, which will also require electricity, plumbing and roads.
Not all the neighbors are opposed to growth, Langley said, but they are unhappy about a sewer treatment facility and all that they fear will come with it.
Horn told the Record-Chronicle that with modern treatment plants, the treated water is cleaner than what already runs through the creek, which includes pesticides from nearby land and animal waste from cattle.
“When it rains, it is not beautiful water running downstream,” Horn said.
Moushegian and others do worry how a development that they said could bring about 2,700 homes would impact the two-lane road infrastructure of FM2164, which Moushegian told the TCEQ couldn’t support this type of traffic.
“Sanger and Denton have the responsibility to residents who will be impacted by this, to recognize and retain the quality of life that we have chosen and to work with us to maintain this way of life,” Moushegian wrote in her letter. “Sanger and Denton must work with residents — not force something on them that is not organized or lacks future insight.”
The Denton City Council hasn’t mentioned it at its meetings yet. At least three of the council members — Paul Meltzer, Brandon Chase McGee and Brian Beck — didn’t know about the project or that Denton was planning to protest it.
Reporting by Christian McPhate Staff Writer of Denton
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