(Pictured: Executive Director of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority, Pete Sepulveda.)

Mayor Patrick McNulty, at the last City Council meeting, said that the second causeway’s previous environmental assessment came to a halt. “In 2017, the state decided that we were no longer going to do any more toll roads and we were about 90% complete with our environmental assessment for the second causeway. That went to a halt. Since then, Cameron County and Hidalgo County have joined forces and created their own RMA (Regional Mobility Authority).”

“It was brought up that we all need to put a little skin in the game. In this legislative session, we tried very hard. Representative Alex Dominguez made an amendment to Senate Bill (SB) 2 to add funding to restart this environmental assessment. Unfortunately, it got removed from the conference committee,” said McNulty.

According to TXDOT, the work that was done was too old. The new environmental assessment will cost 3 million dollars. “If we could figure out a way to raise 3 million dollars and put it toward the environmental assessment, this would help fast track the second causeway, which we all know is desperately needed,” added McNulty.

After a discussion amongst the City of South Padre Island, Cameron County, and the CCRMA, they decided to all come up with a million dollars to start the environmental assessment, which McNulty added is holding them back from making plans. “That’s the whole thing that’s holding us back. We don’t have a complete environmental assessment, so we can’t make plans, we can’t go out for drawings, we can’t ask for funding, etc.”

Executive Director of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority, Pete Sepulveda, added that past legislation opted out of allowing anybody in the state to use private money for these types of projects. This led to what Sepulveda says is “the traditional TXDOT method of funding projects, which is with state money or federal money.”

A motion made by Councilman Joe Rico carried unanimously to approve the amendment for the $333,000 from the general fund for the SPI 2nd environmental assessment.