Manor woman claims neighboring developer is damaging her property with storm water

MANOR, Texas (KXAN) -- Living on a ranchland off of FM 973 in Manor are a variety of animals including mustangs, donkeys, goats, and dogs. They all belong to Crista Swier who has a dream of using the ranchland for her non-profit, THE Sanctuary, an animal sanctuary that will also provide equine-assisted therapy services for families and individuals.

But she has an issue with her neighbor, a developer called KB Home.

"We're dreaming of this future and KB Home is just destroying it," Swier explained. Her property is just south of a new development and the Manor Independent School District Senior High School Complex. She says the new development created a flooding issue on her property.

Scott Dunlop, Manor's development services director, said Swier's property is in a FEMA floodplain, and the properties south of her naturally drain onto her property and the water eventually makes its way to Cottonwood Creek. Swier has owned the property for four years and said it was normal to see runoff after storms, but noticed something drastically different in January of this year.

After a storm with heavy rainfall, she went to her property to find large amounts of standing water on her property. She took out her cellphone and recorded the aftermath and posted it to YouTube. She said she had never seen that kind of volume before.

She filed a complaint with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who then conducted its own investigation of the job site. The TCEQ made an unannounced visit to the construction site. It discovered the construction company responsible for grading the area, DNT Construction, created a hole on the side of a temporary retention pond to prevent flooding of the construction site because the pond was almost overflowing, according to the report.

The storm water was released all at once and the pond emptied onto Swier's property. The TCEQ issued a violation saying DNT Construction did not appropriately dewater their retention pond. The next month, the TCEQ closed the investigation after DNT Construction submitted documentation of its dewatering practices and the agency found it sufficient to resolve the issue.

But Swier said the problem persists. After the January storm, she said her driveway, the only way to access the property, had been damaged and eroded. When she originally had the road built, the construction team placed 4-inch PVC pipes to act as a storm culvert under her road to help with drainage. She said the pipes worked until that day in January.

Swier said DNT Construction rebuilt her road and installed three 12-inch pipes underneath it to help with drainage in the future. She says there have been floods after January and even the new installed pipes can not sufficiently drain the amount of water coming on to her property.

"Now there is so much water that comes off the KB Home construction site that this is not sufficient," Swier said pointing at the new 12-inch pipes under her road. "It just feels like I have no control over the situation and that this is just the beginning."

According to city documents, the development is 136.904 acres and there are plans to build 400 "dwelling units." Swier believes the issue is going to get worse as more houses are built. Currently there are only some paved roads and three model homes constructed on the property. Swier said the added impervious cover, or any type of human-made surface that doesn't absorb water, like a road or a house, is exasperating the issue. She fears that more building will create more water runoff that will enter her property.

There is a retention pond right next to her property that has both a spillway and a pipe that is at the ground level. She says she has never seen water reach over the spillway, instead emptying out of the pipe.

The most recent example of storm water flooding her land was on May 16, almost four months after the TCEQ said the violation had been resolved.

Swier said she has asked the city to look at this issue. Dunlop explained the city has regulations in place that say a development cannot put more water onto a downstream property than the predeveloped levels. He tells KXAN they are proposing to have the area surveyed to make sure the drainage infrastructure is functioning as it was designed to.

If the drainage does not work properly, Dunlop said they will have the KB Home fix the issue.

Benny Paul, Swier's neighbor to the north, is also downstream of the development and says he has seen erosion on his property.

"The volumes of it has increased drastically as compared to the last 15 years," Paul said. He and Swier both said they are looking to file a civil lawsuit against KB Home for the flooding issues.

"I will have to have somebody represent me to protect our interest and to hold KB Home accountable for what they're doing," Swier said.

KXAN reached out to both KB Home and DNT Construction for a comment on this story. A spokesperson for KB Home said they are in communication with their neighbor but did not want to comment publicly at this moment. We did not hear back from DNT Construction, but will update this story once we receive a response.