If you've felt vulnerable at Waterwood because there's no helipad
nearby for life-flight emergencies, relax. Thanks to the Point Blank
Volunteer Fire Department, located eight miles south of Waterwood,
the northern part of San Jacinto County will soon have a helipad.
Donations of money for concrete and materials will finish a helipad
construction project on Route 190. If you'd like to contribute, send
a check to the Point Blank Volunteer Fire Department, P.O. Box 196,
Point Blank, TX 77364 and designate the donation for the helipad.

A reminder, if you want to protest the appraised value of your lot
and/or home, May 31st is the deadline to submit a protest form to
Linda Lewis, Chief Appraiser, P.O. Box 1170, Coldspring, TX 77331-
1170. To submit a protest form, see "Files" on Waterwood Watchdog
site to download the form (must have Acrobat Reader), and
see "Bookmarks" to link onto the Appraisal District's website to
calculate unequal appraisals. Don't forget to include your daytime
phone number since the first step will be an informal phone call from
Ms. Lewis.

The Russell Family, by the way, recently donated to Waterwood M.U.D.
(Municipal Utility District) an easement of around 3 acres to allow
for future expansion of their sewer plant if need be. The Russell
Family says the appraised value of the donation was approximately
$45,000. Speaking of the Russell's generosity, last weekend they
hosted an outing among the Sierra Club of Houston on their preserved
property, on the loop that goes to the Sanctuary at the Holy Trinity
Wilderness Cathedral and then follows the shoreline for around 1/2
mile through the prairies and back to the place of
beginning at the end of FM 135. Several club members also brought
their canoes and paddled the shoreline.

As the giant U.S. economy supposedly zooms out of its first recession
in a decade, doomsayers say Keystone Land and Waterwood lot owners
shouldn't expect to cash-in on investors who are moving away from the
stock market into hard assets such as gold and real estate. Who is
benefiting? The rural communities which are selling large lots, some
as large as 10-acres. Although Waterwood's outdated small lots could
be resubdivided into larger lots in keeping with the general
character of the existing residential area, Keystone Land doesn't
appear motivated to get approval to resubdivide. Nor is WIA willing
to promote this concept by explaining to its membership how to
combine two, three or four lots into one lot for assessment purposes.

Some knowledge of history is required to understand why Waterwood's
real estate is floundering without a rudder, in the face of real
estate successes and growth elsewhere in subdivisions of San Jacinto
County. Waterwood's strategic direction since its inception in the
early 1970s abruptly ended when Horizon Corporation, the developer,
ran into legal problems. In May 1981, Horizon Corporation was cited
for violating federal laws involving interstate land sales. The
Federal Trade Commission ordered Horizon Corporation to pay $14.5
million over a six-year period to a trust fund for the purpose of
refunding moneys to people who had purchased undeveloped lots as a
result of Horizon Corporation's misleading and illegal sales
tactics. The refunds were ordered for not only lot owners of
Waterwood's undeveloped subdivisions, but those who had bought
undeveloped lots at Horizon City near El Paso, Rio and Paradise Hills
near Albuquerque, Arizona Sunsites near Tucson, and Whispering Ranch
near Phoenix.

In addition to refunding moneys, the FTC made several other
stipulations of Horizon Corporation. One was to invest $45 million
over a 20-year period for improvements at the Horizon communities.
Where did the money go? Unfortunately, nowhere. The FTC's Final
Order lead to the so-called "bankruptcy" of Horizon Corporation, a
legal maneuver which exonerated it from adhering to all the
provisions demanded by the FTC.

But when Horizon skipped town, what happened to the lot owners'
perception of the FTC ruling, the goals of Waterwood, and the lot
owners' expectations of their real estate investments in Waterwood?
Twenty years ago, lot owners were told that because Waterwood was
designed as a recreational community, not a residential community in
the Lake Livingston area, "absorption" of Waterwood (growth) will not
occur before the year 2005 due to stiff competition from several
recreational communities in the same area.

Despite Horizon's legal problems and nearby competition, lot owners
were apparently willing to wait it out. The majority of Waterwood's
lot owners were optimistic folks and hung onto their lots, both
developed and undeveloped lots, waiting for Waterwood to grow into
the recreational community that Horizon had intended it to be. After
all, the FTC had concluded that "the ponderance of credible evidence
indicates that substantial development in any of the undeveloped
properties probably won't begin to occur prior to the year 2000."

The majority of undeveloped lot owners, however, didn't realize that
Horizon Corporation's sales contracts cleverly omitted development
obligations. Horizon Corporation never intended to develop any of its
undeveloped properties. By "fractionalizing" the ownership of the
undeveloped subdivisions -- that is, selling individual lots scattered
throughout the 19 undeveloped subdivisions at Waterwood -- Horizon
Corporation actually hampered and frustrated any coherent development
plan that another developer might have otherwise wished to undertake.
The FTC contended Horizon knew that its undeveloped subdivisions, by
"fractionalizing" the ownership, would remain unused as residential
property throughout this century into the next century.

Indeed, in 1995, Horizon claimed it couldn't find a "developer" to
buy the undeveloped subdivisions, and instead, made a clever sales
deal with a nondeveloper, Jacinto Investments/CEM, a company which
hopes to dismantle and return all the undeveloped subdivisions back
to acreage for timbering purposes.

What is a homeowner association to do about the mess created by
Horizon? WIA's Board of Directors under Carey's leadership for the
past 28 years, has taken the "do nothing" approach, claiming that
Horizon made its own bed. But, let's take a look at another
homeowner association affected by Horizon. At Horizon's New Mexico
community, their homeowner association, called the Valley Improvement
Association (VIA), decided to take on the challenge of Horizon's exit
from development. They established lot trades and acquisition
programs, trying to extend the benefits of development success to
members who had purchased undeveloped lots. The Board also hired
DeLeuw, Cather & Company, consulting engineers and planners, to help
with a plan which was presented to, and ratified by, members.

One impressive element underlying VIA's entire long-term plan is the
VIA Board's insistence on quality community development. Anything
else, anything less, the VIA Board states in its literature, denies
its responsibility to the membership. Lowering its sights, they
claim, would hurt all VIA members and help none.

If anyone should know what happens when a homeowner association
lowers its sights after Horizon's exit, it's Waterwood's lot owners.
When Horizon Corporation left its homeowner associations with a mess,
VIA took the high road and WIA took the low road. Instead of taking
responsibility for its membership, the WIA Board lowered its sights,
and in the process, hurt
all WIA members and helped none. Unlike their colleagues in New
Mexico, WIA Directors haven't shared with the membership any long-
term plan for development nor have they taken on responsibility to
undeveloped lot owners who will someday own a lot in a "former
subdivision" that has been logged, without protective covenants to
protect their subdivision's character.

Since Horizon's exit, there's been an absence of any consensus, or
even any credible, detailed financial and strategic picture of where
Waterwood is headed and how the Board of Directors intends to help
Waterwood get there. The absence of a strategy coupled with
cancelling more than half of Waterwood's subdivisions at the risk of
losing half its original membership means Waterwood, under the status
quo leadership, no doubt will continue to flounder without a rudder
until more motivated members step up to the plate and are voted-in to
challenge the status quo directors.

A look at local politics says this feat can be done if enough lot
owners are aware of the problems. Local citizens in San Jacinto
County this past election took the bull by the horn. They voted-out
the incumbent judge, the incumbent district attorney, and the
incumbent commissioner of District #4. In addition to voting-out the
status quo, they took advantage of a state law allowing them to
submit enough names to request state officials to conduct a special
audit of the county's finances, a feat supposedly never done in
Texas.

In other local news, several people have been killed in automobile
accidents on rural roads in the past few months, one involving
livestock on the road. Waterwood Watchdog would like to remind
everyone that hundreds of fawns were recently born; please slow down
in anticipation of deer and other animals and their young ones on
roadways at Waterwood.

Special postnote: A new feature on the Waterwood Watchdog website is
Photo Albums -- one album includes property and homes for sale by
owners, and another album includes nature and wildlife photographs,
including newborn fawns. To see the albums, go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waterwoodwatchdog and click
on "Photos". If you have a digital photograph depicting a house or
lot you want to sell, or Waterwood's wildlife or nature which you'd
like to post, please email it to terrier77340@...