A 75-home community at the northern edge of Bexar County has dealt with sewage problems its developers left behind more than a decade ago — worrying public health experts who say that human waste could wind up in nearby Mustang Creek.
Once on the verge of a solution, this month residents appeared to hit another roadblock, as San Antonio city leaders pushed back on plans to waive the impact fees on a San Antonio Water System’s wastewater connection outside of city limits.
As it stands, the neighborhood is already set to be annexed by the City of San Antonio in 2032.
But on a council that’s grown increasingly territorial about limited infrastructure dollars, members weren’t interested in making a policy exception for Northside residents who could face paying such fees out of pocket.
“If they were down to annex early, that would be something that I might be more willing to consider waiving fees,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said Wednesday. “But to go several years without paying any [city] property taxes, but then to seek essentially some odd $400,000 from the city and our partners, that doesn’t jive well with me.”
Residents of the Villas at Timberwood left the meeting distraught.
Many of them are now in their 80s and say they’ve put all the money they can into this problem, which experts believe poses an imminent threat to the entire county’s water source.
“We’ve spent tens of thousands of hours managing this [community sewer] plant over the past 13 years … we’re physically exhausted, we’re mentally exhausted, we’re emotionally exhausted, and financially exhausted, plain and simple,” HOA board member Tommy Marty told the San Antonio Report.
He blamed the council’s ongoing disagreements over a SAWS rate hike, as well as recent polarizing city budget fights, for a situation he doesn’t believe was fully explained to the council.
“For SAWS to sit there and bully us … it honestly brought me to tears,” Marty said.
Three years ago, the neighborhood reached a $2.8 million deal with the county to secure the easements lay the pipes, and HOA President Roy Block said they were told SAWS would waive the connection fee because the residents were paying for all of the work.
“We’re not asking SAWS for $415,000, we’re just asking them to flip the switch and bill us,” Block said. “If they had to dig the pipeline or be out there with connectors and bull dozers I could understand, but we’re paying for that.”
A failing system
The 75 homes in the Villas of Timberwood sit on one-eighth acre lots in the middle of Timberwood Park, a larger neighborhood between Blanco Road and U.S. Highway 281, north of Stone Oak.
While the Timberwood Park homes have their own septic systems, the smaller Villas at Timberwood were built with an experimental community septic system, which has long caused sewage to back up into a field behind their homes.
Neighbors regularly keep in touch about when to hold off on laundry or flushing the toilet, and they scramble to hire private servicers when sewage backs up so high that ducks land on its surface.
“Their current on-site sewage facility is failing, or has been failing over time,” City of San Antonio Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott told council members on Wednesday. “There’s been ongoing non-compliance recorded by [the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality].”
Against that backdrop, residents of the smaller homes sued leaders of Timberwood Development and Chesmar Homes in 2019, alleging the developers knew about the septic problems and didn’t disclose them to residents when they turned over the neighborhood’s common areas to the HOA in 2012.
When years of negotiation ended in a settlement that didn’t provide enough money to solve the problem, Bexar County stepped up to help close most of the remaining gap, through $2 million from the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funds.
A proposal to fund the last $800,000 of the project includes waiving $415,575 in fees that SAWS typically charges developers to connect to their existing infrastructure.
The city-owned water utility has a fee waiver policy for affordable housing, redeveloping or reusing existing structures or supporting certain businesses — but it explicitly excludes projects outside city limits or in the Edwards Aquifer contributing zone, both of which would apply to the Villas at Timberwood.
SAWS spokesperson Anne Hayden said customers that receive a new service from the utility are charged impact fees because adding that service increases costs for running the whole system.
“The fee isn’t for their line, but rather for their fair share to move their wastewater from Timberwood Park to the Clouse Treatment Plant on the far South Side,” Hayden said. “Impact fees are charged for all new customers that tap into our system.”
On Wednesday, Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) pushed her colleagues to make an exception given the unusual nature of the project.
She worked with the residents during her time as a constituent services director for County Commissioner Grant Moody’s office (Pct. 3), and the ARPA money she helped secure from the county three years ago is supposed to expire at the end of the year.
County leaders got an extension until May of 2027, because it took longer than expected to acquire easements from surrounding property owners.
“That APRA money needs to be spent,” Spears said at Wednesday’s meeting. “I am very concerned. I went out there, I’ve seen it. It’s a matter of time [before the water source is compromised]. This system is duct-taped together.”
But other council members were not as enthusiastic about pitching in, pointing out that waiving the fees would reduce revenues to SAWS and go to a community outside the city’s boundaries.
City-county relations have been quite tense in recent months, and SAWS is already struggling to get council permission for significant rate increases the utility says it needs to fund major infrastructure upgrades for city residents.
“I do not support the waiver for the impact fees for the Villas of Timberwood,” Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said Wednesday. “I do support the county covering these expenses, or council members choosing to use carry-forward resources.”
Each council member is allocated individual carry-forward funds for their district each year, but Spears couldn’t say Monday whether this might be an option.
Other council members said they would be more open to the conversation if the Villas at Timberwood were annexed into the city sooner or put together a repayment plan with SAWS.
“There are many more residents in District 5 and throughout the city of San Antonio that are trying to identify resources to get connected to [a] lateral and off of septic tanks,” said Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5). “[I] understand the value of the fee waiver program. But I do believe, as a council, we could be more intentional connecting our constituents to the programs that are available.”
‘It turned political’
The 25 Villas residents who attended Wednesday’s meeting said they weren’t given a chance to speak, and left dismayed by a discussion they said didn’t seem to capture the full scope of their problem.
Timberwood residents are already SAWS water customers, using a group sewage system they said was approved by the old Bexar Metropolitan Water District.
The homeowners explored many options to fix the failing system, and spend upwards of $100,000 per year to service the system while they await a SAWS connection.
“SAWS told us early on … we would have never approved this septic system for your development,” Marty said “So why are they so against helping us? Or at least being empathetic toward our situation?”
Block said that despite previously telling residents they wouldn’t need to pay impact fees, SAWS executives approached HOA leaders about a potential deal after Wednesday’s meeting.
“[They] came up to us in front of our attorneys and said, ‘Well, if you all will concede to annexation, we’ll consider waiving the impact,” Block said. “It was kind of like blackmail.”
City leaders faced waning revenue for a variety of reasons this year, and have been desperate for solutions to expand their tax base.
But it’s unclear what appetite there might be for annexation from surrounding neighbors, who’ve long been at odds over the sewer issue.
When Villas of Timberwood residents finally reached an agreement to fund a SAWS connection in 2024, surrounding neighbors spoke up against it because of the potential implications for future development.
Some of those residents were still angry at the Timberwood developers for allowing smaller lots in the first place, and worried that a SAWS connection could lead to more surrounding development — effectively rewarding bad actors.
“They won’t be eager [about annexation], I can guarantee you, and I don’t blame them,” Block said of his surrounding neighbors.
Marty said the Timberwood Villas residents were effectively being shaken down for money, as city leaders retreat to their corners on socioeconomic divides.
“It turned political is what happened,” Marty said. “Everybody’s got their hand out. We’re 75 homes. We’re three old men that are running a [sewer] utility — and this has been going on for 13 years.”
