“We’ve had really good discussions with our neighbors, so we look forward to continuing to be a big part of the community.” “As we said from the beginning, we wanted to be good neighbors, good contributors to Bandera County and surrounding areas,” Torn told the San Antonio Report. In October, the Torns and their opponents agreed to pause proceedings in the Texas State Office of Administrative Hearings, where the case had been assigned in April by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.Ĭhris Torn, who’s developing the camp with his father, Sam Torn, said this week he’s “optimistic” about reaching a deal, though he could not discuss specifics. In a phone call last week, Margo Denke Griffin, a Tarpley area resident who began organizing the opposition in 2018, said her group and the Torns are negotiating a settlement that would require no wastewater discharge to Commissioners Creek, which begins on the Torns’ property and flows downhill more than five miles to its confluence with Hondo Creek. The Torns plan to build a new Texas location, called Camp OTX, on their roughly 700-acre property near Hill Country State Natural Area. Such concerns led to the formation of the Friends of Hondo Canyon, a nonprofit made up of 130 mostly Bandera County families who organized to oppose a wastewater permit filed by the Torn family, owners of Camp Ozark, a Christian summer camp in Arkansas. New development also brings sewage plants that can choke the region’s clear, spring-fed creeks with green gobs of algae that feed on nutrients in the wastewater. The two wastewater fights have been among the most heated environmental disputes in recent years in the western half of the Texas Hill Country, where an influx of new residents and businesses is stressing scarce water supplies. Meanwhile, a separate wastewater dispute in Comal County heads to an administrative judge in February. A landowner and a grassroots group fighting over a wastewater discharge permit in Bandera County will likely reach a deal.
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