Alazan Creek is one of the four Westside creeks slated for restoration by the San Antonio River Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.The price tag on the Westside Creeks Restoration Project will likely be millions more than original projections estimated due to high inflation rates and construction costs, San Antonio River Authority officials told members of a project oversight committee last month.
“All four creeks are being designed concurrently,” she said. “The phased construction is going to start with San Pedro and Apache creeks … and then right after that they’ll transition into the next phase of the project to work on Martinez and Alazán creeks.
“They finished it in 1975, and essentially, were turned into drainage ditches as conduits for the water,” Ramirez said. “The banks are solid concrete. So they got the job done at channeling the water downstream toward the river and then up toward the Gulf, but it affected the ecology.” Born on the West Side in 1942, Rodriguez had grown up experiencing both the creeks as they had been in their more natural state and some of the damaging floods the area had experienced prior to channelization.“There used to be thousands of the crawdads in the creeks, thousands, and we would fish for them and eat them,” he said. “I remember trying to save some of our chickens in one of the floods, and hearing the horrible sound an animal makes when it knows it’s about to die.
Although he retired from the River Authority’s board in 2013, Rodriguez remained involved in the project’s progression, helping it to secure federal and county funding. Since then, however, rising construction costs and inflation have driven the estimated cost up to $200 million, Mast said. This spring, the Army Corps will seek approval to proceed with the project’s higher cost, said River Authority General Manager Derek Boese.
River Authority staff are currently working to gather soil data for constructing foundations, and Corps staff are reviewing the data and findings, Krug said. Phase two will include the work on Martinez and Alazán creeks, she said, with a projected finish date in 2029.Brenda Bazán / San Antonio ReportBrenda Bazán / San Antonio ReportBrenda Bazán / San Antonio ReportSitting outside on her mother’s porch with her daughter, Dolores Perez Gonzalez watches her two grandsons play with a football on the front lawn while her husband mows the grass. Beyond the property is a newly poured sidewalk along Apache Creek.
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