What
is the PGA?
The PGA (Professional Golf Association) is a proposed golfing village development that plans on building an 18 hole golf course, hotel resort and living accomodations over the Edwards aquifer. The land is owned by the Lumbermen's Investment Corporation. The Edwards aquifer is a natural wonder that filters rain water and runoff through its limestone layers and provides San Antonio with its sole source of drinking water. To many in the San Antonio community, the PGA development represents the short-sightedness of our city government as it risks our primary water source for the sake of national prestige. The crux of the Pro PGA argument is that having a world class golf resort will bring prestige and economic development to San Antonio. They say that the hotel and golf course would bring much needed jobs to the area. Lumbermen also says that if they cannot build a golf resort, they will construct track housing on their property. Their claim is that unregulated housing is worse than the environmental controls that they would impose on themselves, if they built the PGA village instead.
We don't believe their assessment of the benefit over risk analysis is true. If anything is of importance, it is water. The history of the west is one of access to water and distribution. Preserving and sharing your water source is fundamental to life in the arrid parts of the United States. Risking our sole source of water for the sake of limited economic gain is insane. The truth is that the PGA development ultimately benefits only a small percentage of the San Antonio community. The majority of job growth would be in the low wage sector. The hotel interests have bulked at paying living wage salaries to their employees. Very few individuals would earn the kind of income San Antonio needs to build a viable and stable middle class. Once again San Antonians would be subjected to slave wages. The PGA village while prestigeous in sporting circles would only reinforce San Antonio's dependency on tourism. A diversified economy should be the long term goal of our city council. Ask any progressive environmentalist and they will tell you that golf courses are bio-unfriendly. Golf course chemicals and fertilizers that could leech into the ground will contaminate our drinking water. No matter what protections Lumbermen takes to protect our water source, the potential for contamination will always exist. To allow them to be both potential polluters and their own watchdogs is politically unwise and is another example of our city councils short-sighted vision.
Where do things stand now?
The PGA has now become an issue of civil liberties. The referendum which would have allowed the citizens of San Antonio to decide whether or not to go forward with the PGA development has beeb side stepped. The City of San Antonio and its powerful business allies, fearful of the outcome, circumvented our right to choose by withdrawing the original PGA proposal and resubmitting it with a 15 year delay in annexing the PGA village complex. Why? because annexation proposals are not subject to public referendums since annexation proposals include public hearings. So, no public referendum combined with staged public hearings was a perfect solution to the whole "public interest" problem. Rubber stamped by our city council and held legally viable by the Texas court system, the question, "When do the people have a right to decide what they want for themselves and for their children?"has been subverted.Today the grassroot activists and community groups of San Antonio are deciding how to proceed.
Anti PGA Link
Esperanza
Peace & Justice Center
922 San Pedro
San Antonio Texas 78212
210-228-0201, Fax 210-228-0000
esperanza@esperanzacenter.org
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