We are doing a fine job of subsidizing sprawl here in College Station. Despite sprawl conditions, the city has recently started extending sewer lines into the ETJ. This is our tax dollars going to subsidize unhealthy sprawl. This is our tax dollars going to subsidize wealthy developers.

The reason given to justify this bad idea was to prevent developers from putting in their own sewage plants that would not be as safe as the cities sewer system. Given that College Station was just responsible for dumping 4.5 million gallons of raw sewage into Carter Creek that seems a little ironic. But even without that spill, this claim raises a lot of questions. How many small sewage plants were really likely to occur? Aren’t these plants regulated by the same state standards that our city plants follow? What other regulatory options did the city have access to? When the city put these lines into the ETJ they encouraged sprawl development. But even if they insisted on going forward with this bad idea, couldn’t they have used impact fees to force the developers, who will profit from these services, to pay for them?