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William Gale We expect to write updates for this book, and occasional total revisions, since it is a set of working plans and the plans change as we learn more details. One of the difficulties in setting SEE up is that we will need to do so from a distance of over a thousand miles in any of the likely locations, and particularly in Bastrop County, the most likely location. Also, many of the people we need to talk to want to know that they are not wasting their time, and expect at least that a property is under contract in order to discuss specifics about the property. Therefore we got a property under contract to have a focus for discussion, and then Richard Crews and I visited Bastrop County. On viewing the property, we found that besides the large oaks mentioned on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) description, there was very heavy underbrush. It was basically impossible to walk through. David Coombs, the engineer whom we expect to design the initial septic system was with us and said it would be difficult to get direct borings to test the soil. We had little idea what clearing the underbrush would cost, but feared something on the order of $1000 per acre.
Later in the day, when Jim Zeman, a builder, was showing us a house he was finishing, we noticed that he had cleared moderate underbrush for that house. He said he cleared it with a backhoe and agreed to look at the property under contract. He said a backhoe could clear it easily. A backhoe, with operator, costs about $250 per day, and it seems very likely that at least two to three acres per day could be cleared. Thus the cost would be on the order of $100 per acre, which would make woods and underbrush far less of a restriction. Several of the new MLS listings that the realtor, Bill Chess, had found cited heavy woods. We have a preference for some woods, but as of now, the amount of woods and underbrush is not a decisive factor in selecting the property. Jim Zeman also showed us some low unit cost cabins that he had built for Allen Brunk. I spoke with Brunk in the evening. While external circustances are forcing him to abandon the Moon Shadow cabins he had built, the project is in many ways similar to our project, and he had some specific advice that will be useful. He will be moving to Dallas, and I expect to remain in contact with him. Richard brought four of the copies of SEE, the book, with him. These were generally appreciated, showing the research that had been done to date, and helped us to explain what we were about doing. We soon gave away all but one copy, which we continued to show. Richard has mailed copies to most of the people who wanted a copy, but the rest are currently in transit to the Conclave or to Nick Gauthier who will mail out the remaining copies. We spoke with Carol DuCloux at Aqua Water Supply Corporation. Their meters are placed at the edge of a property and water lines in from there are the responsibility of the property owner. It would thus be pretty ridiculous having meters for each dwelling, with attendant pipes running largely in parallel from there. The alternative is a "master meter" which is a single larger meter at the property edge. Water pipes from there can be rationally designed with larger pipe feeding into smaller pipe. We would like to set up a system where we have a rather large storage tank fed by a relatively small pipe since the connection costs for master meters increase very rapidly with size. However, we need to request an engineering study (costing $500) before we can talk to the engineers. We spoke with Charles McKeown, county commisioner for the precinct in which the property we were examining is located. The purpose was to let him know of our plans informally so when we get more formally devoloped plans to present to the county commission, they will not be taken by surprise. He was very helpful. He confirmed that if a single corporation owned all land and buildings on a property that subdivision would not be required. I was surprised to learn that property taxes are not currently assessed on mobile homes. Since there are a large number of mobile homes in the area (and a mile long section of the highway we drove daily that is all mobile home dealers), this clearly creates an economic imbalance for the school systems. He expected the situation to change soon, which is surely just. One possible reason is that they are classed as personal property rather than real property. He explicitly asked whether we were a religion or cult. We asserted that we are not, and that we intend to work with the community, to be a known group of people so that people see for themselves that this is so. He also remarked on flooding on the road leading into the property we were examining. We returned to the realtor's office where he had maps of 100 year flood plain area, and we soon detemined that the creek shown on the topo map (but invisible due to the heavy underbrush) did make the majority of the property in the 100 year flood plain. Since septic drain lines cannot be built in flood plain area, this information terminated our interest in the property. We had looked at a pair of 14 acre properties which have been for sale since I started looking. Bill Chess, the realtor, had printed out a new list of current MLS descriptions just before we arrived, and a I found a few on there that were interesting. We wound up looking at three properties which are adjacent and which have a very nice appearance. Streams originate in springs on two of them, flowing through the other one. We checked the flood plain maps first this time, and they are apparently not in flood plain areas, being the head waters of the streams. The streams have dense trees and underbush for about twenty or thirty feet on either side, then away from the streams is open. One has an Aqua water meter on the property, another has a working well on the property, and the third lies 600 feet from the pipe ending in the meter on the first. The weakness on these properties is that they lay within an army base during World War II, and the area may have been used for artillery practice and if so might have buried live artillery shells. All such properties were cleared for surface use when the government sold them, but to place septic drainage lines below the surface, we have specified in the offers that an EPA study be performed (at our expense). The properties are all quite similar, so we made a set of phased offers on all three: the first offer expires in about five days, the second in contingent on the first failing and expires a few days later, the third is contingent on the first two failing, and expires on the last day of the 1997 Conclave. We spoke with two builders. Jim Zeman, previously mentioned, has built a number of low unit cost dwellings in wood framing with steel roofs. W. D. (Dub) Hines has built many steel framed houses. These are a bit more expensive than wood framed houses, but appear to have a greater durability and lower maintainance. We also spoke with Chris Irion of Palm Harbor mobile homes. Palm Harbor is the only manufacturer of mobile homes among that mile of retail sales outlets. One of their two factories for singlewide homes produces a totally standardized line, while the other is set up to allow customized designs. This includes omission of a kitchen (so that several units could share a kitchen), and omission of carpet and paint (allowing a houshold to use low toxicity finishing material). Any of these housing options may be of interest to some households. We also met Shea of Zendik Farm. We were sorry to learn that they are feeling pushed by growing development of the Austin area, and are planning to move, possibly to Virginia. They are likely to move within the next six months, and thus to be gone before we begin construction. A highlight of the trip for me was an hour spent in the University of Texas law library. We were able to find a Texas specific set of forms for articles and bylaws of a cooperative corporation. Once we have purchased land and made the state definite, I expect to work on the corporation. These forms will help a lot, and are much easier to get hold of in Texas than anywhere else in the country. We did what we could to squeeze in time for video shots of specific properties, and of the area in general. Ingrid Moon may be able to pull a few minutes of coherent video out of the raw footage. We expect to expand and develop this video as we proceed, using it for publicity for the FMF. Richard and I talked a fair amount about visions of what can be developed at SEE. Two items are rather specific. First, an FMF museum, which would have exhibits of long range FMF plans (Aquarius and on to the galaxy...) plus more active exhibits on technology including ocean based technology that will be developed elsewhere, especially Ocean Thermal Energy Coversion, seacrete, and polyspecies mariculture along with generally applicable technology such as waste recycling, and technology specific to settling remote land areas such as earth bermed housing, trickle agriculture, and permaculture. Second, we want to be well prepared for guests, who would be welcome to stay days, weeks, months, or years. The guests we particularly need to plan for have little money but a lot of ideas and enthusiasm. We would like to be able to provide room, board and clothing at little ($50/month ?) or no cost to such visitors so anyone interested could pitch in to the FMF dream, and so that SEE would be a place of very active intellectual ferment. This can be done by using the lowest cost housing we know of, old travel trailers. There may be other solutions, such as bunk houses or something like a college dormitory.
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