Farmers Branch Rejects Addison's Offer of Mediation to Resolve Long-standing Dispute Over Shared Creek

Farmers Branch has declined a recent mediation offer by the town of Addison to resolve a 7-year-old dispute over the quality of water flowing through a shared creek.In a letter dated April 23, Farmers Branch City Manager Charles Cox told Addison City Manager Wes Pierson that the city was rejecting a mediation offer approved by Addison Town Council members on April 10. Cox's letter states that the rejection was based on the ineffectiveness of a 2015 attempt by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to mediate an end to the creek dispute. During that process, the letter states, the neighbors reached an agreement to share the costs of bringing Addison into compliance with a state permit the town was issued for aquifer drilling as part of reservoir construction for the town's upscale Vitruvian Park apartment development. The arrangement ultimately failed, the letter says, when Addison later called on Farmers Branch to recommend construction of a road for the development.More recently, the letter states, Farmers Branch offered to pay 40 percent of the estimated $771,000 cost of bringing Addison into permit compliance. Addison, however, demanded that Farmers Branch pay 60 percent of the cost, it states.  Continue reading...