By Joni Simon
Contributing Writer

San Antonio, Bexar County and Army officials have released a Camp Bullis Action Plan designed to protect the military facility from degradation by en-croaching development. If enacted, a light rail line could be coming to the Leon Springs area.

“It goes without saying that it is the duty of every citizen of the San Antonio area to support Camp Bullis and its military missions,” San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger said in unveiling the far-reaching plan.

“We have to make this work, and I think we have a plan now that will make it work.”

The plan involves several steps, including restrictions on outdoor lighting in existing and new developments all around the post.

“We must preserve our dark skies in all of the undeveloped areas of San Antonio and Bexar County,” Hardberger said.

“I do not rule out that if we have to, we could go in and retrofit downward lighting into all buildings within a three-mile radius of Camp Bullis.” Hardberger said federal, state and city money would be used to help property owners make the transition to dark sky lighting, if necessary.

The proposal would also allow the Army to have the right to review and potentially to reject any zoning change request that would lead to additional development within five miles of the Camp Bullis fence line, a barrier that stretches deep into the city of San Antonio and into Kendall County nearly to the Boerne city limits.

The plan also calls for the city and the county to fund a Regional Habitat Conservation Plan that would purchase land to provide habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler to allow Camp Bullis to free up some 10,000 acres of its 28,000-acre property that is now restricted from troop training because it is providing habitat for the endangered species as required by federal law.

In conjunction with that plan, Hardberger said an Endangered Species Assessment should be made directly to the city of San Antonio for any new development within five miles of Camp Bullis.

Currently, an assessment is required only when endangered species are spotted on the property, and even when it is done, it is filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and thus the city and the Army never see it.

“They should do it and give it to us and give it to Fort Sam at the same time,” Hardberger said. “That way we could get in there before they cut the trees down and not after.”

One area of the projected growth in training at Camp Bullis is the much larger number of trainees who will be moving back and forth between Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis.

“As more and more people come in, the traffic is going to increase considerably. The down time is disruptive and this will be disruptive for our own civilian traffic as well,” Hardberger said.

He said any transportation plan has to “speed up the movement of troops” to and from Camp Bullis, and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff floated an intriguing idea.

“Union Pacific Railroad is willing to work with us on a rail line, which would go all the way from Southtown to The Rim, in terms of putting a light rail system in,” Wolff said. “This would alleviate some of the traffic problems we’re having on Interstate 10 and would provide another mode of transportation that we do not have today, and would lead out to the Camp Bullis area.”

Wolff said talk about the passenger light rail link is still in its early stages, but to be effective, it would presumably run from Southtown, which is located along Alamo and Presa streets south of downtown, up the existing UP rail line that runs east of downtown, through Fort Sam Houston, and then across the city and up Interstate 10 on the rail line that runs just east of Clark High School.

Hardberger said a meeting that includes Comal and Kendall counties, as well as the city of Fair Oaks Ranch, will be convened to “sell” the plan to the entire region.

Major General Russell Czerw, the commander of the Army Medical Department Center and School, which trains Army medical personnel, praised the city and county for coming together on the action plan.

“We need to look at working as a unified effort,” Czerw said, “working with developers, because we all share, and we will all benefit from this.”