Today was an interesting day. The dredge barge sunk completely over
night. It is resting on the bottom of the channel. Diesel fuel was
released into the channel and marina. The emergency response unit for
oil spills of the Texas General Land Office supervised the cleanup. The
cleanup crew worked all day and there is still some more to take care
of tomorrow. I have some good photos, but I'm having technical
difficulties loading them to the blog. I should have them posted by
Wednesday. The dredge crew worked to clean up the spill as well as to
salvage what they could from the deck of the barge. I understand that a
Coast Guard barge will come in soon to try to pick up the dredge barge.
I would think that their diesel engine will not be up and running any
time soon. They say they have removed about 20% of the fill that was to
be removed. Other problems have popped up also. The settlement ponds
are not working well. The water is not draining off at the rate that
was expected. Additionally, the neighbor on the south side of the
retention ponds happens to be employed in a job involving water quality
issues. He has challenged the placement of the pond that it may cause
contamination of the ground water in his well as well as killing
vegetation on his property. We have had to drill a test well and
monitor it weekly to determine the water quality.Belaire Environmental
is handling this. This will up the cost of the project. I would think
that the location of our well near the mitigation site would indicate
that leaching on salt into the ground water would have happened long
ago if this were a problem, but you never know.
A Bottlenosed
Dolphin washed up on the HEB shoreline. I first heard about it today,
but some say they saw it yesterday which means it was not affected by
the oil spill.
I happened across Dave Schultz(former owner) downtown today. He is doing well.
Early
Thursday morning, before daylight, a vehicle went out of control at the
curve on Fulton Beach Road. They may have hit the hump over the dredge
pipe. They careened across the entrance road and into the HEB fence
taking out two posts and about 20 feet of fence. No one found the
vehicle, but the headlight was left behind.
The security cameras
were worked on on Saturday. All the cameras seem to work now with much
greater clarity. I even saw someone catch ahardhead off the pier while looking at the video Saturday evening.
While
working on my taxes I noticed that my energy bill for 2008 was $500
less than 2007 when I was with CPL. That is good, but deregulation for
Texas has resulted in much higher costs overall than before
deregulation. The Texas Legislature is addressing this in this session.
Our
bookkeeper, Heather, was out of the office ill today. I need to check
with her to review the February bills. Her statement for February shows
our expenditures were 307% of budgeted amount for the month. There must
have been some unanticipated expenses.
I have added a link for the
on site rental office to the links at the top right of the blog opening
page. Justin had not noticed, but he said he appreciated it. This last
week almost everyone was rented. I don't know that I have ever seen so
many spring breakers. It is much quieter now.
Justin says the superpier project and the crossbridge
replacement is getting closer to a construction start. For Phase One
this will mean another $2,000 plus assessment. The last $1,750
assessment may be billed separately from the monthly dues later this
month.
Two owners are trying to refinance their condo mortgages.
They are both running into problems. For one the appraisal came in at
$290,000 which is good, but the underwriters balked at the fact that no
one is bonded that handles our monies.Karra is checking with our insurance agent, Angie Ruddock
, to see if that can be handled by their company. The interest rate
difference for 30 years on $290,000 would have amounted to $94,320
savings over the life of the loan. The other owner ran into a different
problem. The bank looked at declining selling prices atKontiki and felt
that although the appraisal came in at $234,000 the falling sale prices
indicated that over the life of the loan the property value may fall
below the financed amount.
Both owners are trying to find a way to get by these obstacles.