Underground Source of Life

Our aquifer is a very important part of our city and our ecosystem as well as our survival. Elyzabeth Earnly a representative for AGUA came to speak to my humanities class at Palo Alto College. She explained exactly what happens in city council meetings about the building of housing divisions and other complexes on aquifer recharge zones. She talked to us about the many different city ordinances that we have that developers must follow. Although we have city ordinances developers are still able to get away with disobeying them because their land is vested also know as “Grandfathering”; which dismisses them from having to follow the ordinances set forth by City Council and many other agencies like the one that Elyzabeth is a part of. She also gave us the names of other organizations that are there to help the city council in enforcing or city ordinances. Her presentation was an eye opener for me and made me realize how important the aquifer is to our city. She also mentioned how important it is that we stick together as citizens of San Antonio to rid our city of these developers that don’t seem to care about our only fresh water source.

Life in My Neighborhood

I live on the South Side of town on 205 Sunglo DR. about five minuets away is Loop 410 and I-35. My neighborhood is full of working class families and is kind of a quiet place to live. Most of the houses around my block are alright and well maintained but some are rundown, but I have seen worse in other parts of the city of San Antonio. Most of the families in my neighborhood have middle aged parents with young kids or teenagers still living with them and most of the families living around me are of Hispanic origin. My Grandmother lives right across the street from me and my family my mom is her daughter and my Uncle lives with her and takes care of her when he can; he is a busy man most of the day. I live cattycorner from the Carroll Bell Elementary school that I attended as a kid growing up in this neighborhood. Not more than about four or five blocks away there is an HEB and a couple of mini malls and shopping centers, so everything that is a necessity to living is no more than a few blocks away from my house. One bad part of living next to a school and having small streets is the traffic that builds up after the kids are let out, they tried to fix this by making a child pick-up area but its still to small to handle the amount of cars that come through there. Despite that it has cut back a little bit of the traffic that would occur in the neighborhood. Another bad part is about one block away is a pretty big Night Club that every Friday, Saturday, and late Sundays there is a lot of traffic on Pleasanton Road around eleven o’clock when the club opens and two o’clock at night when the club closes. Other than that there’s not much that goes on. I go to Palo Alto College as a Criminal Justice Major and that’s where I do most of my studying even with my busy schedule. I work with my Uncle, who is a Construction Contractor, as his main Drafter, who draws all of his blue prints for the business, which is called A.D. Willems Construction. I also spend a lot of time and physical working at my church, Mayfield Park Baptist Church which I have attended since I was born. I am apart of the Building and Grounds Team which is responsible for cleaning, cutting and maintaining the lawn and small gardens that we have on the premises. I also am apart of the Morning Worship Team I run the sound board as well as run the cameras that we have recording the Pastor’s sermons to give out to the homebound members of our church. My Spiritual wellbeing is a very important part of my life and always will be. I go to church every Sunday as well as the Wednesday night service that we put together for the community; we have a fall festival coming up in a few weeks that is free and open to the whole community.

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