Drainage official envisions waterfall park

When Ernesto Gamez looks over acres of land behind Cameron County Drainage District No. 1, he sees something beyond a grassy and sometimes muddy field.

He envisions a cascade park with a horse shoe-type lake with plenty of water that will allow for paddle boats and canoes to travel through. It will be like a peninsula.

The cascade will be about three-stories high. The lake itself will be 20-feet deep.

"People will go like ‘wow,'" Gamez said.

There will be benches and picnic tables and a couple of bridges that will serve as crosswalks over the water to the main park itself. There will also be about a mile and a half walking trail around the park.

Golf carts will also carry people from the parking area to the park itself. There will only be a $1 fee for parking.

"It's going to be the biggest most popular park probably in the Rio Grande Valley. People are going to come just to see our water park," Gamez said.

Work is slowly taking shape on the project, which is brainchild of Gamez and Carlos Ayala, who have envisioned such a park for Brownsville for approximately five years.

Ayala, a former Brownsville assistant city manager, has always been fascinated with water. He got the idea for constructing such a park after taking a recent trip to Wichita Falls, which has a 54-foot man-made waterfalls. If it could work in Wichita, it could happen here too, he said.

"It's going to be around a 30-acre park when it's done," Ayala said.

The drainage district recently received a $220,000 grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for the park's walking trail and benches to be located around and inside the park itself, 3510 Old Port Isabel Rd.

"This (grant) is going to help me dive into the pond as opposed to just sticking my toe in," Gamez said, adding he estimates it will take around 18 months for the park to open.

As Gamez and Ayala travel across the field in a white pickup, Gamez points out to the location showing the work in progress. The employees have been digging and moving large amounts of dirt around to help lake take its shape.

He's kept the project pretty quiet to prevent the "politics" from getting involved, he said.

"If I would have politicized it, it would have bogged everything down," Gamez said. "There would have been too many personalities."

Gamez and Ayala are still tweaking the plans and the park's cost estimates. They plan to apply for additional grants to help pay for the park's construction. The work on the park will be performed by the drainage district employees.

Near the park area will be a large retention pond that will feed water into the lake so it doesn't go dry. The pond will also have gates that open and close that will prevent any over flowing. Extra water will be pushed back to the Rio Grande.

"Men can do this; women can do this if they sit down and relax. We can leave a nice little legacy here," Gamez said.