Ricchi steps from council seat to defend Heard

At the end of Tuesday’s council session, councilmember Ray Ricchi stepped down from his chair and faced his peers as a concerned citizen. With the three minutes time allotted for such comments, he spoke on the controversy over a sewage line the North Texas Municipal Water District plans to build through the Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary, of which he is a board member.

Earlier in the day, a commissioners hearing found in favor of NTMWD’s imminent domain suit, allowing it to place the line through Heard property. The sanctuary is filing an appeal on the grounds that they had not received an impact report that would give a more detailed picture of the effect construction would have on its land and wildlife. The Heard expects the report by the end of December.

Ricchi said that the City of McKinney, which has representatives at NTMWD, was not made aware of plans for this sewer line, and that staff acted on behalf of member cities without their input. Quoting the most recent numbers from the Heard’s petition to protest construction, upwards of 8,000, he said the number of McKinney citizens who’ve signed totals more than the votes any council member received to be elected.

“Therefore, there is a great outcry of the population for this endeavor, which will truly impact our city’s unique by nature, our green philosophy, and there is really no reason for this to have transpired: One, without the city’s knowledge until after the fact; secondly, the board members that represent our city there had no knowledge,” Ricchi said.

Ricchi hopes to have an agenda item before the city soon and a resulting resolution to prevent the sewer line from passing through the Heard. He said this is not a money issue for the sanctuary, which only wants to prevent damage to what he called one of the most unique features of both McKinney and the southwestern United Sates.

“If we had been aware, I would have been requested that [the NTMWD] staff come before us and explain why it is necessary that they must take this route to go through,” Ricchi said. “Again, this isn’t a money issue. This isn’t anything that the city of McKinney is going to be paying to the Heard. This is just an idea of why do we have to ruin a wetland and wildlife sanctuary when there’s plenty of other open areas to run this 42-inch sewer line through.”

Ricchi said that if the pipeline was going to pass through the 18th green at Eldorado County Club, people would be very upset about that. In his view, citizens should be far more concerned about what will happen to the Heard should appeals, his own included, fail.

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